Don't Get A Job, Build A Business E-Book

Joanne Hession

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 243

Beschreibung

This book is full of the kind of information you need to run a small business successfully - whether you are just starting out, or you have an established business and you want to develop it and ensure its survival. Through a series of 'Killer Questions' the authors highlight all the important things you need to think about to make your business a success and ensure you are heading in the right direction. The book is divided into three sections: the first deals with the business owner themselves, the second addresses other people involved in the business, whether they are customers, suppliers, staff or consultants, and the third looks at the structure of and planning in the business. The informal approach and short chapters means that the book can either be read straight through or be dipped in and out of for easy reference. The authors have a combination of fifty years' business experience between them and are both currently involved in business training and coaching.

Leseprobe

Best-selling author and business consultant, Joan Baker is committed to helping others get the life they want. Joan is a company director and consultant to a broad range of large businesses and SMEs in private and not-for-profit organisations both in Ireland and abroad. She has written eight books specialising in helping individuals and organisations achieve success. Currently residing in New Zealand, Joan works internationally as a skilled consultant in high performance. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Joanne Hession is a successful entrepreneur and recognised leader in training, mentoring and business in Ireland. Joanne is responsible for training thousands of budding entrepreneurs through her business QED Training (www.QEDtraining.ie) and works internationally in the Business School sector through QED International (www.QEDinternational.ie). She is passionate about business and providing new businesses with best in class training on how to do business better, smarter and more successfully. She can be contacted at [email protected].

MERCIER PRESS

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© Joan Baker and Joanne Hession, 2013

ISBN: 978 1 78117 138 7

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 175 2

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 176 9

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Contents

A Note from the Authors

Introduction: Owning a Business v. Being

Section 1: Yourself

What’s the Dream?

What’s Your Role?

Personal Productivity

Putting Pareto into Practice

Don’t Just Do It – Delegate It!

Achieving Your Financial Freedom

Networking – It’s Who You Know

Your Sounding Board

Section 2: Organisation

Clarifying Your Business Dreams

Three Business Strategies For Success

Are You Fishing in a Dry Ditch?

Developing A Stronger Business Model

Does The Business Pay You

What’s Your Edge?

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

Pulling the Plan Together

Build Your Own Dashboard

Productivity

Family Businesses

Section 3: Other People – Customers and Employees

Finding Customers and Keeping Them

Helping Customers To Buy

You Have Only One Reputation: Building Your Brand

Handling Complaints

Finding Great People

Love Them Or Lose Them!

Getting the Best from Your People

You Get What You Reward

Conclusion

Acknowledgement

About the Publisher

A Note from the Authors

As we finalise this book in December 2012, we are only too aware that we are living in a time of difficult economic conditions and that these conditions may continue for quite a while. It may not seem, therefore, like the most opportune time to consider setting up a business, but we strongly believe that in these conditions owning your own business may be a much better use of your talents and energies than scrambling to obtain employment. Be aware, however, that there is much more to owning a business than simply becoming self-employed! Business creation is not just about one job for one person, it’s about building a wealth-creating asset that delivers value and employment for the owner and for others.

The majority of entities described as businesses are no such thing! Many trades-people, professionals, contractors and consultants merely have a job rather than owning and running a business. It’s relatively easy to register an occupation as a business and begin to work. Unfortunately, that is all many who consider themselves business owners do. A technician rather than an entrepreneur sets up most such businesses, immediately getting busy doing the technical work that they are good at and neglecting to work on and develop an actual business.

When, therefore, you start in business for yourself it pays to think about it as a business concern (i.e. a separate entity from yourself) right from the start. Whether you envisage it as always remaining small or eventually becoming large, the same basic principles apply.

We have spent a collective fifty years working in and on businesses, managing others, observing what works and what doesn’t. We are both driven to achieve success and we both have a passion for helping others succeed. We decided to write this book in order to share many of the useful things we have observed, lessons we have learned and positive business techniques we have experienced and taught with success.

Whether you are already in business, or still thinking about setting up, we hope you will find the ideas in this book constructive and helpful. We suggest that you read it with a pen and paper to hand, so that you can note what you need to do for your enterprise to give it the best chance of flourishing.

How to use this book

Business books can be confusing and overwhelming as there are so many subjects and issues to discuss. We have tried to keep this book as simple as possible by organising it into only three sections:

1. The first section looks at you as a business owner, and the special mindset you need to have to run your business successfully.

2. The second section considers the organisation of your business and how you can step back from its day-to-day running to free up time to enable you to think strategically and make longer term plans for its development and for your personal life.

3. The third section looks at the people you work with: your employees and your customers. It tells you what you need to know to attract and retain great staff and loyal customers for the long-term, successful growth of your business.

Hopefully, this will allow you to dip into whichever subject has the most use or more immediate relevance for you.

We think that good questions can often be even more useful than answers, so we have sprinkled ‘Killer Questions’ throughout the book. The idea is for you to learn to ask the important questions whenever appropriate – then, even as your business and circumstances change, you will focus on the essential matters. Again, it’s a good idea to write these questions down, answer them and work out what changes you need to make to help your business thrive. Answers vary from business to business and from time to time, but good questions rarely change!

We hope this book helps you achieve the success you are looking for with your business. We’d love to hear about your experiences and your suggestions as to how you feel we could help further. You can contact us through our website, www.dontgetajobbuildabusiness.com.

Joan & Joanne

Introduction: Owning a Business v. Owning a Job

There are several things that distinguish those whose goal is to run a successful business (business owners) and those whose goal is simply to create a job for themselves and never to develop a business (the self-employed). The real difference is in the mindset. Business owners have a different attitude. Here are some of the most important things that they think and do:

A business owner uses income to develop capital

To the self-employed, income is the whole point, as they need it to live. To the business owner, profit (and positive cash flow) is a resource for reinvesting in the business and growing the concern. After all costs (including the owner’s wage) have been covered, the surplus is used for developing new products and services to make the business more valuable. The whole point is to generate wealth through satisfying the needs of customers or clients. It is not that income doesn’t matter to a business, of course it does, it’s what is done with it that’s different.

A business owner works on the business rather than in it

The self-employed are likely to be busy working every hour to deliver products or services. The business owner, by contrast, is focused on building an enterprise that can run without the owner – a business with other staff, a place with structure, systems and processes, a concern with clients and customers who don’t relate only to the owner. In short the business owner is building something which is independent and ultimately saleable. The business runs the self-employed person, while the business owner runs the business.

A business owner has a plan for the business

In difficult financial times like these, many are driven to set up in business because jobs are scarce and it seems like the best or only option. Of these, the self-employed are seeking income and security, while the true business owner has a plan for what the business (however small at inception) could become. They are already thinking about the eventual nature of their business, how it could grow, who might ultimately buy it (or manage it) and how it would be distinctive.

A business owner develops goodwill

The self-employed are usually much too busy doing their work to focus on where they are headed. The business owner, on the other hand, knows that ultimately a great deal of the wealth they generate will come from goodwill: the intangibles that belong to the business. The kinds of things that make up goodwill include:

brand awareness and reputationgood management practicescompetent and loyal staffgreat customer listsgood supplier relationships.

A business owner is seeking appropriate returns

The primary focus for many self-employed people is selling their time and skills. Business owners, by contrast, are very clear that they are looking for an appropriate return on both their time and their capital. Business owners take considerable risks. In addition they are well aware of the security of paid employment and all of the benefits that usually come with this – sick leave pay, redundancy provisions, health insurance, etc. They are also aware of the opportunity cost – what could be done with the time and money that is invested in their business? So business owners are looking for much more than a wage: they are seeking a return on their investment commensurate with the capital, skill and time they have invested in it.

A business owner wears a strategic hat

The self-employed person thinks like an employee and often regards administration, management and finding new customers as interruptions to the work they have to do, e.g. complaining that they only managed to clock up three hours of billable time in a day because of time spent training the apprentice, dealing with customer complaints or filing the VAT return! Business owners, on the other hand, are thinking about the leadership and management of the business and the development of capital. One is tactical in outlook: ‘Where is my work coming from today and what will I get from it?’ The other, the business owner, is strategic and thinking longer term about what the business needs to do to thrive. These roles are often incompatible. It’s not that business owners don’t need to do any real work in the business. Of course they do, but their focus and mindset is different from that of the self-employed.

Section 1: Yourself

Let’s start with you! Let us suppose that you have already or wish to set yourself up in business – either as a sole trader or a company – and are wondering how are you going to make a go of it, keep it growing and really create value from it. A true business, as opposed to self-employment, needs to develop and grow. Be assured that your business is never going to be better than you are. There are some important and difficult questions, therefore, which you need to ask yourself before you take this life-changing step. For example, how good do you personally need to be to allow your business to succeed? What improvements do you need to make? How will you keep changing and developing personally at a rate that will allow your business to grow and thrive?

For all the usual esteem and adulation of high profile CEOs, bigger businesses are far less dependent on individuals than are smaller concerns. In large corporations there is almost always an executive team of highly qualified and experienced people involved. Small businesses, on the other hand, rarely have such an inherent comparative advantage. They are usually composed of very few people, often just you, the owner, to begin with, and so are much more exposed to the consequences of your behaviour.

So what sorts of things do you need to focus on? It’s all too easy to put all the focus on the operational side of the business: the product/service, the customers, the staff you need, your premises, etc. It’s tempting to dive in and work really hard on these issues and forget that you need to be in the right space and thinking straight from the start. Your business will only be as good as you are and will never change unless you do – make no changes and the future is staring you in the face. Your business will never grow unless you do – what aspects of yourself, therefore, need to be developed? In this section we go through the issues you need to consider before you go any further with your business and we give you some pointers on how to address them.

What’s the Dream?

A considerable amount of nonsense has been spoken and written about business vision over the years and you may have been one of those cynical employees who has had to sit through corporate presentations on management’s vision of the concern’s mission and to pay homage to the ‘mission statement’ plaques in the corporate reception area. But like many fashions and fads there is a germ of real insight at the core of the concept of the mission statement – in other words the dream for the corporation. Everyone involved in a business enterprise should be aware of and buy into the mission of the business that employs them and what, therefore, they collectively aspire to attain.

It is very important that you should have a dream for your own life. What do you really want? What would be an ideal life for you? What do you need in order to attain that life? Much of this will come down to developing the wealth that will allow you the freedom to live the life you want. We have more to say later about achieving financial freedom through your business.

As a business owner, you will be relying on your business to help you achieve the life of your dreams. You may hope to build a business that you can sell for a substantial sum, or your ideal may be a successful business with great cash flow which allows you a rewarding lifestyle that includes continuing to manage or govern your business. Indeed, working hard in your business may itself be a part of your dream existence. Whether or not you wish to retire rich or continue to run a business for decades, the success of your business will usually be essential to attaining your dream.

You need a dream for your business, too, in order to make it as successful as possible. This is not about wordsmith-ing clever slogans or coming up with wishful thinking PowerPoint presentations. Rather, having a realistic dream or vision for your business is about having a view about what you are trying to create. Your dream may be a picture you can see clearly in your head or a story you can tell about the destination you want to reach. The whole point of clarifying the dream for your business is that it provides a guide: for you about what you are creating and for others who will work with you towards that end. If you already have others working with you it is a good idea to get them involved in discussing or refining the business vision.

Clear dreams are compelling – they make us want to do the things we need to do to make them come true. They demand a stretch: if they were easy we would have achieved them long ago. Compelling dreams provide meaning. If I am to devote years of my life to this I need to see a reason why it is worthwhile. Nobody gets out of bed for a number! It’s tempting to try to run your business through financials or key ratios or performance indicators of some sort. These are all useful of course, but they are not at all inspiring. People always want to know why they should sign up, why they should make an extra effort. This is why being able to talk about the wonderful things your business will do, if you can get it right, matters so much. Well-described visions make it obvious what you need to do, they highlight priorities and make it easier for you to choose what to do next. It becomes easier to set goals and to measure your progress, because you know what you are trying to achieve and how to monitor whether you are achieving it. The more people you have around, the more important it is that everyone is on the same page: everyone is clear about what you are trying to achieve – the dream, the vision for your business – and everyone knows the path you need to follow to attain that dream.

What do you value?

We all have values. So do organisations. We may have spent very little time working out our own values or those that drive our business, but others can usually see clearly what it is we care about as a person or what factors a business values. It’s worth the effort to be clear about what matters to you so you can make sure you can honour that in your whole life. Your business is unlikely to make you happy unless it is a good fit with your personal values. Likewise your business is unlikely to thrive unless you are clear about exactly what your business values. It’s all too easy to think you have to value everything: customer service, innovation, speed, creativity, diversity, personal touch, etc. However, while all of these are undoubtedly ‘good’ things, it is impossible to make more than a few things a hallmark of your organisation. So what does your business really need to value? And how would your customers know that you value these things? Another way to look at this question is to ask: what drives you?

You need to have a clear answer to these questions in your head, which is best achieved by putting it down on paper before you proceed. Life’s too short to live someone else’s dream!

What’s Your Role?

Killer Question

What’s the stuff that only I can do?

Despite all the hype about celebrity CEOs, small and medium-sized enterprises are far more reliant on their owner/manager than any big corporation is on its chief executive who, more often than not, is surrounded by an executive team of highly qualified and experienced people. That makes your role as owner/manager and how you conduct yourself far more critical to your business. The business is a reflection of you.

Many businesses start with only the business owner and an idea. The problem with this model is that the owner may become used to doing everything. This is a very limiting concept and hugely constrains the business potential. Your business can never get any bigger when you follow this type of model! Even if you start alone you need to do so with a view to developing and expanding the business and having a mindset already focused on this objective.

Don’t get a job!

If you want to be successful in business you should not see yourself as self-employed, owning a ‘job’; you are a business owner. Beware of giving yourself a job – working long hours, at high risk, for relatively poor pay! Yes, you will have to work hard, but your role is also to work on the business rather than just in it. Too many business owners get completely waylaid working all the hours possible in their business. They have simply created a job for themselves – and usually a poor one. The real problem with that is that no-one is working on the business – running it well, seeking out growth opportunities, developing the products, services and people that will make it great. A good way to make sure that you don’t get mired in working in the business is to set aside a morning a week (or one day a month, or whatever) to focus on bigger issues, such as strategy, growth, brand or planning. This is best done away from your usual place of work as it is too easy otherwise to slip back to doing what you normally do.

Working on the business – what must you do?

There are aspects of your business that must be handled by the owner/manager with or without professional assistance – developing strategy and direction, perhaps meeting with key clients or suppliers, dealing with the bank or venture capitalists, handling public relations, recruitment, etc. It is important you are clear about the things that are essential for your role to undertake so that you ensure you are spending most of your time on the functions which allow you personally to control your business or that you are good at. The rest needs to be outsourced or delegated to staff.

What are you good at?

It’s important to be clear about what it is that you bring to your business. Most of us are only good at a small number of things. Consider where your strengths lie – marketing, networking, selling, financing, organisation, innovation, leadership, people – and resolve to focus as much as you can in that area. It’s the things we don’t do well that are often critical to identify – where will you need help and where will you get it?

The business won’t outperform you!

Small businesses tend to be a reflection of the person who set them up. That means your attitude and your behaviour are critical to the success of your enterprise. What kinds of attitudes do you bring to your business? How do you behave in your business and what are your standards like? All of this will be obvious to both customers and staff. Successful business owners tend to be positive, optimistic, can-do kinds of people. They are good at attracting others who want to do business with them and work in their business. They hold themselves to very high standards of behaviour – ethical, fair, good to be around. Staff will look to you to set an example – they will never treat customers and suppliers any better than you treat them. Where do you need to set the bar so that your business can become great? Ask yourself if any of your habits or attitudes need a tune up – don’t allow yourself to hold your business back.

What kind of culture will you create?

Culture is simply ‘the way we do things around here’ or as we heard a client say recently, ‘what you do when no one is watching!’ So culture is simply the set of behaviours that your employees think are normal or acceptable in your business. That will include things like the way they treat each other and people outside the organisation. It will include the kind of communication they think is appropriate between themselves and with your customers. In short, when this is good it is very, very good (and very valuable to your business) and when it is bad it is horrid! When there is a good culture people do the right thing and they do it as well as they can even without supervision. With a poor or inappropriate culture, your business is on its way down each day.

You won’t be able to achieve the culture you want overnight, but you will need to be clear about what you want and vigilant about bringing it about. Think about yourself as a role model. Be careful about what you reward and reinforce. Consider well what you will draw attention to and correct. Look for the behaviours you want and seek to get more of them; stamp out the ones that will damage your reputation, both inside and out. At any one time there will be habits and behaviours that you want more of and those you want to see less: be clear what’s on each list and work hard to get what you want. Remember, they are all watching you.

Personal Productivity

What’s the point of having a great dream and wonderful ideas if you can’t get anything done? We all get derailed at times – too many meetings, email, doing too much ourselves, competing demands from our other roles in life. In the end, the prizes go to effective people – those who can identify the priorities and make sure that most of their time is spent in areas that give a really good return on their efforts and skills. That’s so easy to say and ever so hard to do on a consistent basis.

Killer Questions

What are the most important things that need to be done?

What can I get other people to do for me?

In this chapter we detail some of the best methods to become more effective.

Audit your behaviour

The word ‘audit’ sends shivers down the spine, but nothing beats good data. Keep a log for a few weeks and account for your time – using five to six minute intervals like lawyers or accountants is a great way to do this (how do you think they focus in order to rack up all those billable hours?). Of course, you don’t have to stop to record what you’re doing every few minutes, but at the end of each thirty- or sixty- or ninety-minute period jot down or use an app to record what you have spent your time doing. We still do this from time to time. It will provide you with a great reality check and stop you getting complacent. And watch what you do outside work – there’s no point in toiling frantically for a few hours at work and then frittering the rest of your time away – audit the full twenty-four hours. You’ll be amazed at where your time goes and how little value you get.

Limit the ‘to do’ list

Many of us use these like a wish list – and there isn’t a chance of everything on it happening in a day! Furthermore, it looks overwhelming. We also mix up the essential with the trivial. By all means have a ‘catch all’ list – somewhere to dump every passing ‘must do sometime’ thought. But to get your ‘to do’ list working well for you is really simple: identify the most important two to three things you must do today and work on number one until it is finished. This sounds simple, but it is actually not easy, as human beings are far more disposed to be distracted by trivia – unnecessary interruptions, email, gossip, interesting asides, etc. Your brain would much prefer to do easy stuff and fights you when you need to focus on bigger, tougher issues – developing a plan, having a difficult conversation, making a hard choice, etc. But these are the sorts of things that move your business forward. In essence, you have to choose between being busy or being effective. Hopefully everything that is important to do today isn’t just on the list because it has now become urgent owing to neglect!

Organise your day