In general, people who start their own business possess a wealth of desirable traits and skills that compel them to initiate their ventures. Virtually without exception, they're very capable individuals who are naturally optimistic, passionate, creative, dedicated, highly motivated, action-oriented, and are not afraid of hard work and long hours to realize their goals and ambitions. Although many business owners consistently display these positive characteristics, it's no secret that many new entrepreneurs find themselves faced with severe challenges while trying to turn their business into successful enterprise. There's a lot of truth in the statement, "starting a business is the easy part, the real challenge is making real money from it."
One of the main occupational hazards of owning a business is getting buried in the trivia of the daily business operations. When owners get caught up in the details of running their business, they can easily lose sight of what they, as an owner, should be doing to turn their business into a profitable venture.
The vital step on the path to turning your business into a profitable enterprise is to become more of a CEO (chief executive officer) type of owner. In other words, keep your eye on the big picture and create a system that will ensure your business operates the way you want it to, without your constant involvement in attending to each and every detail. You'll also need to know what type of activities you, as an owner, must be focused on to achieve any degree of sustainable success.
The potential benefits of becoming a CEO type of owner are significant and will have a profound impact not only on the financial performance of your business but on the quality of your lifestyle as well.
As more of a chief executive owner, your business won't be totally dependent on you being there all the time, so unlike many business operators, you'll be able to have a life outside of running your business too. In addition, you'll be better positioned to grow your business through new marketing initiatives, setting up additional lines of business, developing multiple locations or even franchising your concept, if that's what you want to do.
Let's establish the cold hard fact here; knowing how to run your business isn't enough. Many people who start a business don't fully understand the role they should play as an owner. They're convinced that managing or focusing on the operational functions in their business is all that's really needed from them to create a profitable, scalable and sustainable enterprise.
Consider for example the entrepreneur who starts a venture or business managers who raises some capital and create their own concept. They're confident that because they know how to "run a business" they, by default, also know how to build a successful business. This couldn't be farther from the truth and is the fatal assumption behind the failure or lack of success in many, if not most of business ventures.
One of the problems of being a successful business owner and knowing how to run a business is that many end up to only that; constantly "running the business." And if the owner spends all his/her time running the business, he/she often overlooks or doesn't pay adequate time and attention to those things necessary to manage other equally important aspects of any business like marketing, promotions and strategic thinking.
The more dependent a business is on the owner's day in, day out involvement in the operational details of the business, the greater the risk of failure. When business owners are unable to detach themselves from the daily activities of running the business, they are, in all but very rare situations, unable to do those things necessary to move the business forward in any meaningful way.
Three Big Lessons from Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group
You may wonder what an independent business operator could possibly learn from the man who created the Virgin Empire. What could you possibly have in common with a major corporation that serves millions of customers a day via 400 companies around the globe?
From an organizational standpoint, you may not have a lot in common with Virgin, however, Richard Branson's ingenious approach and guiding principles are not only relevant but provide highly relevant gems of wisdom every business owner should know and apply.
Branson's leadership and business sense helped turn Virgin Group from one retail outlet to one of the most profitable business enterprises of all time. Just how Richard Branson was able to build such a massive and extremely profitable business operation in a relatively short time span certainly deserves our attention.
First lesson, get to work 'on' the business, not 'in' it. When Richard Branson devised the master plan for Virgin Group back in the 1970s and started his first records store in Oxford Street London. He didn't go to work "in" the business. He went to work "on" the business. To Branson, the first Virgin business was a model or prototype that was to be reproduced again and again in cities and towns all over the England.
Instead of personally rolling up his sleeves and running that first Virgin records company, he began the process of developing every operational function of that business from inception to final launch, and so on. Without changing the essence of the concept, he made refinements and proceeded to develop a comprehensive set of standards and procedures, a system, if you will, for running a records outlet "the Virgin way."
After completing his first objective of building a completely developed business model for the records business, Branson then moved on to the next phase of his plan. He was now able to roll out numerous outlets in a systematic and proven way that virtually ensured their success.
Branson then went to work on Virgin's other business opportunities and formed several multi-billion dollar companies in airlines, media, music, cosmetics, energy, mobile communications, health banking and transportation to name a few.
Second, the 'Innovation, system and creativity' are the solutions. To have any chance of realizing his vision of a company with hundreds of locations and thousands of people operating them, Branson knew that every business had to be operated in a profitable manner by employing innovative people supported by solid systems and inspired by continuous creativity.
I always tell my clients that for example the reason to have a communications system is that it's the only way to get extraordinary results out of ordinary people. Businesses can't afford and really don't need extraordinary people but they do need to leverage their people with excellent internal and external communications system. You want ordinary people who are able to produce excellent results by having an excellent marketing and operational communications system.
With an innovative communications system, a business becomes a valuable asset in itself because it has the ability to produce consistent results and do this with or without the constant, direct involvement of the owner.
By contrast, many business owners who never stop working "in" their business create a bottleneck and deprive their operation of vital and timely communications. They start out being the primary go-to person in the business, which, of course, is understandable and necessary at the beginning, but if they stay in this role for months and even years after a reasonable start-up period, the business, the people and the owner all suffer.
When owners continue to be intimately involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, in a way they can't also function as an owner. They are closer to being another employee. Sure, the owner is the boss and their name is on the lease and the bank loan, but beyond that, they are working in the business in much the same way an employee or a manager would.
It's important that business operators recognize the implications of the way they approach their business and how they see their role in it. If they're spending most of their time and energy running the business, chances are that their business isn't achieving its potential for success and they don't have much of a life outside of the business either. The reason many businesses have problems is that the owner is not focused on those functions and activities that an owner needs to be doing to move the business forward.
Third lesson, multiply your business, in your mind, a hundred times bigger than its current size. Imagine Richard Branson visits your business and is just blown away by the concept you've created. He likes it so much he wants to form a joint venture with you and provide you with the capital to build 100 more, just like your first.
So, you're now faced with the prospect of running 100 more businesses. Do you think you'd start to do anything a little differently in your business beginning tomorrow? It should become very evident that you could no longer run your business the same way you're doing it now. You could no longer operate the business in a way that requires you to be there all the time doing the work.
You'd realize, just like Richard Branson did, that your focus needs to be on building a system capable of producing consistent, predictable, high-quality results nearly every single time "without you." The more your business depends on you being there every day, the greater the chances that your business will not reach its full potential for success. Your business has just got to be able to operate without your constant involvement, and developing a creative system supported by innovative strategies will help you get there.
In conclusion, if you begin the process of transforming yourself from mere employee to a CEO with the same passion and commitment you had when you started your business, you'll end up with a better business and a more valuable enterprise. While the time and effort will be significant, you'll be in a much better position to remove yourself from the daily demands of operations and focus your energies on other important functions that an owner needs to be doing.
In my next article we will discuss the various systems that you can deploy in your operation to turn your business into a profitable enterprise that can be profitably multiplied!
What is the key to multiplying your business and your wealth? Michael Yacoub, The Success Coach, shares his observations from working with thousands of successful entrepreneurs and not so successful ones for 25 years. He gives you the key to the vault where your treasures of self worth, entrepreneurship and big picture thinking are hidden.
