Your Role as Business Owner

Blog Introduction

In over 20 years of working with small businesses I have found that most owners tend to DO MORE (work harder) rather than learn new ways to do things BETTER.

Most small business owners are so time-constrained operationally that they don’t take the time to “upgrade” their skills to operate more effectively – they don’t take the time to go to seminars, read books or magazines, or get on the Internet to study new and better ways of managing their businesses.

What’s Different about this Blog?

These weekly, practical postings will focus on the SEVERAL things you can do NOW to improve your business. You’ve heard of Pareto’s Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 Rule – 20% of what you do produces 80% of the results, plus many more variations of this.

This Blog will not recommend a multitude of things to do, but focus on just a couple of things each time to make great strides towards the business and personal success and satisfaction you really desire.

How You Will Benefit from this Blog:

• You WILL have greater business and personal success, as YOU define success.
• You will experience more joy and satisfaction in your work.
• You will make better use of your time and resources.

This First Session will Consider You and the Role You Play as the Business Owner.

Michael Gerber in The E-Myth (and later in The E-Myth Revisited) describes how it takes three types of people with three distinct skill sets to successfully run a business:

1) Entrepreneur – The one who has the vision, is very goal oriented, who lives in the future, who is able to motivate and inspire people to press ahead.

2) Manager – The one who can plan, organize, delegate, establish and control processes; managers manage both people and systems.

3) Technician – The one who does the technical work, who loves getting his hands dirty, whether it be in plumbing, or designing, or cooking, or fixing cars, or decorating, or whatever.

Michael’s research reveals that about 70% of people who start businesses are technicians! They LOVE doing the hands-on work but blow it when it comes to selling, marketing, managing, keeping records, etc. Is this why 70-80% of Businesses fail within five years?! This is part of the answer.

The First Crucial Questions is, Which One are You?

If you don’t really know or are trying to be all three, you are going to be greatly stressed and most likely not very joyful, happy or successful in your business. The outcome is marginal business success at best and outright failure at worst. You need to concentrate on your NATURAL skill set and somehow provide for the others, either with the right employees or through outsourcing. (You MAY come to the conclusion that you really need to work for someone else rather than operate your own business.)

We’re Going to Carry this Principle a Bit Further in this Second Assessment.

Think about this: when are you most motivated, experience the most job satisfaction, are most productive, contribute the most to your business, feel truly fulfilled, and are actually working toward reaching all of your potential?

This is when you are working out of your Gifting and Passion, doing what you are naturally GOOD AT and LIKE TO DO! Think about times in the past (or present) when you have done things you were not good at or didn’t really enjoy: you were unmotivated, you procrastinated, your mind wandered, you did other things to avoid this particular task, you had a difficult time concentrating. In short, you were very UN-productive!

So this final exercise will help you design a role that factors in your gifting and passion, to develop a job description that fits YOU (realizing that we can’t get a 100% job fit – there will always be tasks and activities that we do that we don’t particularly like; but we want to minimize these). (See The Doom Loop System by Dory Hollander.)

1) To begin, list ALL of your tasks and activities on the left of a sheet of paper.

2) To the right of this list, make four columns:

“Good At” / “Not Good At” / “Like” / “Don’t Like”

3) Now, put check marks in the columns that describe each task you do. You should have checks in two of the four columns.

4) Finally, redefine your role and redesign your job description based on what you’re “Good At” and what you “Like.”

You may not be able to change everything at once, but you can begin with one or two things – assign these to someone else or outsource them. Gradually work towards an overhaul of your job that will make a real positive difference in your and your company’s performance!

This is the first posting of my new blog and may be here for several weeks since it will not have much traffic initially. Then I will be posting weekly. What I will offer here are short, practical “sound bites” of things to apply immediately to help you be more successful, both professionally and personally. Instead of taking hours or days to wade through a book or magazine or seminar, you will pick those one, two, or three things to implement that will have the greatest impact on you and your business.

Short Bio:

• U.S. Navy Supply Corps Officer
• MBA University of Michigan
• Internal Auditor
• Marketing Director
• Administrator / Controller
• Business Affairs Director
• Business Management Consultant
• Small Business Center Director, NC Community College

[For more Business Success Tips, go to www.bizsuccesswithless.com]

Tags: Business owner, business startup, business success, business tips, Dick McCormick