Blog | Entrepreneurship

How to Use Systems to Expand

Move your business from the left side of the CASHFLOW Quadrant into the right side leveraging the power of systems

It’s no secret that most businesses don’t make it. Some studies show that three out of ten businesses don’t make it with in the first year and ultimately 9 out of 10 fail within ten years.

Thankfully, our Journey Healing Center was one of them that made it but not without serious hurdles we had to climb.

As I’ve discussed in detail before, our first year was spent securing funding. Surely, potential investors would feel our passion to help others and throw money at our new venture. Sadly, that was not the case. It took no’s from every bank we approached and a little luck from an angel investor to secure the money for our first location.

It took many things for everything to come together but the first step was getting serious about our own financial education.

Tired and (NOT!) true—advice

Both Lisa and I were raised to believe that in order to have money and become rich, we would have to go to college, get good grades, save money, and live debt free. (This, of course, applies to those who don’t become a movie star, professional athlete, a doctor, lawyer, etc.) We really never had many discussions with our families regarding how to make money that didn’t require getting a “good” job. We certainly didn’t learn concepts like Robert’s rich dad taught him about creating money from nothing, using other people’s money (OPM), or investing for cash flow.

To Lisa’s family, putting your money into a 401(k) was investing and to my dad the thought of giving money to someone else to invest was absurd. In my dad’s world of restaurants and nightclubs, cash was king, it was something to protect at all costs. With an understanding of our backgrounds it should become clear why securing funding took us a full year. Neither of us had much financial education.

But we didn’t stop. Even after all the banks we approached for a loan told us no and Arvis (who eventually did provide our funding) made it quite difficult for us to get the money required to get the ball rolling.

The demand to grow

Once we had our healing centers profitable, we became aware of an entirely new service that was lacking.

We built our treatment facilities to help addicts and their families confront and overcome the painful realities of substance abuse. Once a client completed our in-patient programs they returned to normal life.

However, while we had great success working with our clients in our facilities we knew the battle against addiction never stops. We knew our job wasn’t finished once they completed the 28 days of rehab. So, we purchased a property in Sandy, Utah that would provide additional long-term residential treatment at an affordable price.

But we didn’t stop there. We knew that in order to grow into a “b” business, according to Rich Dad, we needed to expand into another state. And so in 2004, and again in 2007, we expanded into Arizona opening two new healing centers.

Moving from the left to the right

After a few years of growing those two new centers we realized we finally had a true Rich Dad business, one that could expand.

And that’s the key to running a B-quadrant business. If we had stopped at one facility, we would have never realized just how important the systems of a B-I Triangle were. It’s systems that allow a business to move from the left side of the CASHFLOW Quadrant as an S into a B on the right side.

Think about your business. What systems can you incorporate that will allow you to expand?

If would like to learn more about our fight, check us out at WarriorsHeart.com

If you’re interested in learning more about social entrepreneurship, grab a copy of our book The Social Capitalist