So many would-be entrepreneurs and business owners only want to jump in and open the doors.
They want a get-rich-quick scheme that will let them buy a program today and be rich next week.
Or successful.
Or skinny.
Or have the relationship they always wanted.
No “work” involved.
No “practice” needed.
“Just plug and play! It’s easy!”
That’s not how you’ll create anything of value.
In fact, the vast majority of owners I’ve run across over many years simply believed all they needed was good common sense, because anyone could run a business with sheer willpower.
Of course, that’s not the case. It takes much, much more than common sense, as we’ve learned.
It takes uncommon skill. Those uncommon skills are not only the technical work of your craft or trade, but also, your openness to learning the skills of entrepreneurship.
To successfully run your business, you need to continuously grow your own skills – but not those that center on making you a better technician.
I can’t grow my practice by being a more efficient tax professional.
An electrician can’t grow their business by being able to wire a house faster.
A doctor can’t grow their practice by diagnosing patients faster.
We all must be committed to developing the uncommon skills centered around leadership, management, and learning the “business” of entrepreneurship.
The truth is, though, that very few people want to do that type of work. In fact, many business owners refuse to do it because to them, their belief is that building a business – isn’t about practice, it’s simply about work and creativity.
Even if they did acknowledge that some business owners might need to practice, how many of us know small business owners who would never agree they needed to practice?
They’ll give you some nonsense about “following their heart” or “being creative” … but they won’t agree to work on their own skills as entrepreneurs and leaders.
To truly build a small business to the point it could be called successful and replicable takes an enormous amount of time, uncommon amounts of practice, and uncommon amounts of skill.
…But that doesn’t mean you’re “done.”
What it does mean is you will have created a business where you can test everything that will ever happen in that business. Under that roof, or under a new unit in another town.
It’s a buffer between theories and the real world.
It is the ultimate place to decide the question, “Does it work?”
Truly, you have to test your business. What worked yesterday might not work again, ever, and you need to know that, not hope – like Pavlov’s dog, that a ringing bell means food most of the time…
You have to test it as Ray Kroc did; to test, fail, and test again.
To understand how the “French fries” of your company will stay hot and fresh, and how long those French fries might be held for service, and how ALL the systems you have created and will create work together.
NOT just Lead Generation, Lead Conversion, and Client Fulfillment Systems.
Not simply payroll, or sales, or human resources, or marketing, or training, or any one of the hundreds of systems any business must have to be successfully executed.
Not by you making educated guesses, but by your team, knowing exactly what to do and how to do it because you realized that the system runs the business and the people run the system.
Do you need to step away from the “easier” role of the Technician?
(YES!)
Do you need to understand your weaknesses and shortcomings as a leader and begin actively addressing them?
Do you need to reorder your daily schedule, or reallocate time to work on your business systems, or whatever?
Get it all out there, on paper, and begin to actively make room for those steps. It won’t happen overnight, but it won’t happen at all if you don’t take action.
A LOT of this work doesn’t have anything to do with “taxes” but it will, in the end, affect them. If you’re wondering about the long term effects, then let’s have a call to dig into the facts, not the rumors, and how growth and development really can put more money in your bottom line (and your pockets!)…
Sincerely,
