Most business owners tend to find themselves stuck in their business without clarity on fundamental things like cash flow, scaling up, strategic growth, profit and revenue management, hiring talent, how to build a championship team and what to focus on.
As a result, the business owner isn’t a real business owner, but rather a business operator who works crazy long hours – and this without knowing the correct next steps to take in order to leverage their time, energy and resources effectively so they can step out of the daily operations and focus on growing the actual business.
In other words, they are so stuck in the business that they can’t make time to work smartly and strategically on business aspects such as growth, human resources, teamwork, key performance indicators, products and services, building vision and image, and creating additional income streams with limited or no extra marketing costs.
These are some of the elements every business owner should focus on. During my coaching and mentoring of international business owners we make a point of regularly revisiting these aspects to make sure we are on track and taking the right actions.
There are three deadly ingredients which will spike and cripple any business. Understand and solve these three things and I firmly believe it will help you overcome some of the toughest hurdles that stop most businesses from succeeding.
First is managing your money. Most people have no clue how to manage their money and as a result, they struggle financially because they find themselves in constant cash-flow problems. You need to learn to separate your business income into different accounts. Be persistent and disciplined about allocating the income on a weekly or monthly basis. That way you will be more connected to the company’s cash flow and it will help you understand what is actually going on in the business. Make sure you separate the funds. For example, set up an account for marketing. Have funds in a tax account, so you don’t run into problems with the taxman. Have an education account in your business so that you can hire experts to train and coach your team. Most people have all their money in one account, maybe two and as a result have no clue what’s really going on.
Second, honour your agreements. So many people make empty promises, they say ‘yes’ when they should be explaining why it’s a ‘no’. When you do this your word becomes cheap and people lose trust in you. Make your word golden. If you say you’re going to do something, just do it!
Honour your agreements, which includes showing up early for meetings and sending out e-mails when you committed to doing so. People will, as a result, love and appreciate working with you.
And finally, add tremendous value to the marketplace. Make sure the product or service that you are providing makes other people’s lives better. Remember, price only becomes an issue in the absence of value. So, add, add, add value to as many people as possible and watch and see how you get rich. The more value you bring and add to the marketplace the greater your reward. These are some of the challenges that I help business leaders with, by walking them through the scary unknowns of owning and driving a successful and profitable business forward.
Arnon Barnes is a social entrepreneur, success coach and business mentor. He has successfully trained and mentored over 70,000 people in many different areas of business from over 52 different countries around the world. He will be speaking at Executive Escapes Retreat, Malta on November 7-11.
More details and information at www.executive-escapes.com.
