This month, I’ve been really carrying on about small business owners stepping into a larger role as the leader of their businesses, and while it might seem weird for a tax professional to be preaching this, the truth is simple:
Somebody’s got to.
You opened the doors to your company for any variety of reasons, but I want you to take a step back: do you simply want to pay the bills or replace your former income from the “corporate” world or would you like to have the quality of life you dreamed about “back then?”
Seriously! When you worked for other people, you thought that being an owner would provide ALL those things you didn’t have – money, free time, maybe even a bigger house, faster car, and so on … and now?
Have you done that?
Statistically, most small business owners haven’t.
The challenges of building your business the “right” way, versus what most of your competitors have likely done, is the same as the difference between a sports car and an economy car.
Both will get you “to work.”
Both will be reliable.
They might even be the same color.
…But that sports car? Even though the principles of construction with the economy car may be similar, it is far superior in how those materials are used and organized.
How the systems work together to create a new experience.
That sports car – and your company – should not be run-of-the-mill. It should be unique.
Efficient.
They can do specific things incredibly well.
Yes, they require far more of the driver – and respond better to highly skilled “drivers” – than anything else, and they make the maximum of every opportunity for performance.
Not everyone is capable of extracting the maximum performance from a sports car, not is every business owner capable of extracting the maximum performance out of their company.
Do you want the Ford Festiva or the Ferrari F8?
On the surface it might seem easier to buy the economy car or build a bad business model and simply try to improve it since capital might be scarce, but the reality is this: A lot of truly great sports cars and businesses started on a shoestring.
Apple and Amazon?
Yep – started in a garage.
Lotus race cars?
Yep, started in a garage.
Ferrari didn’t start in a garage, of course, it started when Enzo Ferrari rebuilt a Fiat for racing after he was fired by Alfa Romeo…
It began in a stable…
What allows your company to be a high performance organization is your dedication, as the leader, to your Dream, Vision, Purpose, and Mission. Your desire to create a company that is dedicated to its purpose and has developed a structure that is truly designed for that purpose alone.
You must know what your business does and create the systems to allow it to do that perfectly.
…And that means you create and manage two specific things:
The tools and the metrics.
Now, a couple of emails ago, I shared some examples of the metrics and what could be quantified with them, but what about the tools?
Imagine our sports car without the tools and gauges that can ensure it’s operating at peak efficiency? Imagine a team member who is highly motivated to learn how to work in your business but receives no training?
As a leader, you must be able to not only measure results, but understand what those results mean and develop the “tools” needed to improve those results.
So, what are the tools?
There’s no easy answer to that question.
The good news is you don’t need to have every single one of them in place yet, you simply build as you go!
For example, if, your business today relies on your to handle all of the sales, then the primary component of the metrics that job must measure is based on – you guessed it – your role as a sales associate.
ALL the things you quantify and document – metrics and systems and so on – will not only serve to become the training system for all new sales people, YOU will now be in the role of the Sales Manager.
You guessed it! NOW you will quantify and document how THAT position does the job as well as develop the tools for how the sales team is managed.
Can you see the brilliance?
This makes it far easier than you might ever have thought to grow your company, identify next steps, and simply create more time for you, as a leader.
I’ll bet it makes you more money, too.
Sincerely,
