Don't Get A Job, Build A Business

Growing Your Own Business

Joanne Hession, Joan Baker

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781781171752
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Carrières

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.

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

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