Do You Have What It Takes To Start Your Own Business?
Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to start your own business? Yeah, me, too.
Starting your own business can be an exciting and rewarding experience. It can offer numerous advantages such as being your own boss, setting your own schedule, and making a living doing something you truly enjoy. But, becoming a successful entrepreneur requires many things.
Consider whether you have the following characteristics and skills commonly associated with successful entrepreneurs:
Are You a “Smart Creative”? Are you able to think of new ideas? Can you imagine new ways to solve problems? Entrepreneurs must be able to think creatively. If you have insights on how to take advantage of new opportunities, entrepreneurship may be a good fit.
Are You a Calculated Risk Taker? Being your own boss also means you’re the one making tough decisions. Entrepreneurship involves uncertainty. Do you avoid uncertainty in life at all costs? If yes, then entrepreneurship may not be the best fit for you. Do you enjoy learning about the opportunities available and obstacles you might have to overcome so you can enjoy the thrill of taking calculated risks? Then read on.
Are You Independent? Entrepreneurs make a lot of decisions on their own. If you find you can trust your instincts — and you’re not afraid of rejection every now and then — you could be on your way to being an entrepreneur.
Are You Personable and Socially Persuasive? You may have the greatest idea in the world, but if you cannot persuade customers, employees and potential lenders or partners, you may find entrepreneurship to be challenging. If you enjoy public speaking, engage new people with ease, and find you make compelling arguments grounded in facts, it’s likely you’re poised to make your own new business succeed.
Are You an Effective Negotiator? As a small business owner, you will need to negotiate everything from leases to contract terms to rates to getting employees and others to do what you want when, where, why, and how you want it done. Polished negotiation skills will help you save money and keep your business running smoothly.
Are You Open To Being Supported By Others? Before you start a business, it’s important to have a strong support system in place. You’ll be forced to make many important decisions, especially in the first months of opening your business. If you do not have a support network of people to help you, consider finding a business mentor or consultant. A business mentor is someone who is experienced, successful, and willing to provide advice and guidance. Business consultants do the same thing professionally, meaning they expect to be paid for their services. If you are buying a franchise in order to start your own business, then your franchisor should be a major component of your support team.
Do you think you have what it takes to start your own business?
Why Turnkey Processes Yield The Best Results
Have you ever wondered, “How can I go big in my business without a technological breakthrough?” Yeah, me, too.
In his book Discipline Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, posits only two distinct types of entrepreneurship exist. Aulet’s first type includes small and medium enterprises usually started by one person to serve a local market seeking the rewards of personal independence and cash flow from the business.
The MIT professor’s second type, innovation-driven enterprise (IDE) entrepreneurship, involves more risk-taking and more ambitious as entrepreneurs, working in teams build a business off some technology, process, business model, or other innovation that will give them a significant competitive advantage over existing competitors. IDE entrepreneurs seek to create wealth through exponential growth more than to remain in control of their companies as they drive to become big and fast-growing to serve global markets with the help of venture capital from a limited number of new part-owner-investors who insist on seizing control of the enterprise.
There is, however, a third type of entrepreneurial enterprise that blends these two extremes. This third type, which is achievable by every small and medium enterprise owner, is to start, buy, run, and grow a turnkey business in order either to sell it for profit or sell duplicates of it as franchises.
Rather than being based on a technological breakthrough, turnkey businesses based on quality management improvements drive the success of the clear majority of small businesses in America and around the world today. Quality management improvement drives better businesses to be more effective, more efficient, and, therefore, much more profitable than their competitors in many ways.
Unlike Aulet’s SME model, the turnkey model blends the best of both entrepreneurial worlds. It begins with a focus on local, then regional markets, but has the end game of letting others rent the business process the turnkey entrepreneur innovates. The turnkey quality management system innovated allows for duplicable jobs, instead of tradable jobs, which multiply employment instead of merely relocating employees. And, most importantly, it grows exponentially with the franchisor staying in control of his or her business model and operations, while each franchisee begins with and maintains control of his or her own personal risk, reward, and destiny.
Whether you want to be a small business owner, an IDE entrepreneur, or an owner/franchisor, if you want to truly own your own business and get the biggest return on your investment of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people in your business, then you must use the P10 Principle to start, buy, run, grow, and sell your business as a turnkey operation and begin with one location and let other people rent your business processes as franchisees.
[reminder]What are you doing to turnkey your business?[/reminder]
10 Reasons Why You Can Hire Us
Here are the top 10 reasons business owners hire us:
1. You can hire us because of our expertise.
2. You can hire us to identify problems. Sometimes you are too close to a problem inside your business to identify it. That’s when we ride in on our white horses to save the day.
3. You can hire us to supplement your staff. Sometimes you discover you can save thousands of dollars a week by hiring consultants like us when we are needed, rather than hiring full-time employees. You realize you can save additional money by not having to pay benefits for consultants like us. Even though fees are generally higher than your employee’s salary, over the long haul, it simply makes good economic sense to hire us as consultants.
4. You can hire us to act as a catalyst. Let’s face it. No one likes change, especially small businesses. But sometimes change is needed, and we may be brought in to “get the ball rolling.” In other words, we can do things without worrying about the corporate culture, employee morale, or other issues that get in the way when an organization is trying to institute change.
5. You can hire us to provide much-needed objectivity. Who else is more qualified to identify a problem than a consultant? A good consultant provides an objective, fresh viewpoint–without worrying about what people in the organization might think about the results and how they were achieved.
6. You can hire us to teach. We canteach employees any number of different skills. We keep up with new discoveries in our fields of expertise–and are ready to teach new clients what they need to stay competitive.
7. You can hire us to do the “dirty work.” Let’s face it: No one wants to be the person who has to make cuts in the staff or to eliminate an entire division.
8. You can hire us to bring new life to your business. If you are good at coming up with new ideas that work, then you won’t have any trouble finding clients. At one time or another, however, most businesses need someone to administer “first aid” to get things rolling again.
9. You can hire us to create a new business. We have great experience in this field. Not everyone has the ability to conceive an idea and develop a game plan. We do.
10. You can hire us to influence other people. We can get your message in places you cannot send it yourself.
[reminder]What’s holding you back from getting our help?[/reminder]
Put a New Concept in an Old Space
Have you ever been sitting in a dumpy little restaurant and thought to yourself, “Gee, this old place would be a great location for [insert your favorite food place] to open up a new store.” Yeah, me too. More likely than not the owners of the the worn out place your in are tired of owning it and it can be economically bought, updated, and changed into the new concept you desire.
My son, Yitzchak, and I recently associated ourselves with Transworld Business Advisors of Baltimore to add business brokerage to my evergrowing scope of business consulting services company, The Besser Business Bureau. Over the past several weeks, we have been wearing the soles off our shoes walking around Baltimore’s downtown harbor districts getting to know as many of the business owners there as we can. If the owners aren’t in when we pass by, we leave the head person in the store a sealed envelope marked “Confidential For Business Owner Use Only” containing a brief note from us asking them to contact us if they’ve ever considered selling their place. If the business is closed as we go by, then we tape the envelope to the front door of the business based on the high probability that the next person unlocking the door will either be the owner or will give the envelope to the owner.
Three things have surprised the heck out of us. First, drop letters are very effective contacting tools if properly done. Second, there are a ton of business owners out there running marginally successful enterprises who are tired of owning them and seeking to get out of what they are doing for a reasonable price. Third, there are tons of people looking to buy a marginally successful business in the hopes of making it better by making it their very own.
So, if you think you see an opportunity to put your expertise to work in a new location, find the owner and ask about buying the place.
[reminder]Do you have what it takes to break out of your rut and try a new way of earning a living?[/reminder]
Policy, Procedures, and Work Instructions are the Key to a Turnkey Business
Do you ever worry what will happen to your business if you get hit by a bus? Yeah, me too. And I tell my clients all the time, “A quality management system comprised of good policies, procedures, and work instructions will handle all the details of running your business for you, so you can work on growing your business instead of doing your business.” A recent article in Washington Business Journal shows the strength of my position. Nea{cosmo}politan Pizza Favorite Rises To Franchise Heights, WBJ, August 26, 2016, p.6. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/08/24/attention-pizza-lovers-there-soon-could-be-many.html
A husband and wife team started moving pizza from a food cart and then opened one great Neapolitan pizza business, Pupatella, that gets national recognition. But, they hate dealing with the day-to-day details of running the business and their lack of a detailed quality management system has prevented them from opening additional locations. To get over this obstacle to growing their business, they hired an outside consultant who grew his own business from one to 50 locations by putting in organizational systems and formalized processes.
Hopefully, the expert will give them the playbook they need to grow the number of locations they want and Puppatellas will be popping up everywhere.
I help people optimize their businesses by helping owners stuck working in their businesses work on them instead by proceduralizing them from top to bottom, side to side, front to back, start to finish.
[reminder]What process centered quality system do you have in place in your business?[/reminder]
Can You Pass The Bus Test?
If you writing your business plan gave you trouble, try writing your business transition plan. Entrepreneurs incessantly think about developing, building, and scaling their enterprises. And, except for the big dream of going public or getting bought by a bigger fish, if you are like most owners, you will seldom think about transitioning your business to its next owners. And the failure to put in place a transition plan now, will almost certainly cause you or your family to lose almost everything you have worked so hard to build.
Think about what would happen if you got hit by a bus walking to the coffee shop around the corner.
- If you were unconscious for a week, a month, or longer, who would step in for you and keep your business running?
- If you died, that same question applies, as does, what would happen to your business?
- Would someone run it for your family? Why would they?
- Would someone buy it from your family? Who? Why would they? How much would they pay?
In as much that failing to plan at succeeding in your business is tantamount to planning to fail at it, failing to plan at transitioning your business is tantamount to just letting it whither on the vine as you lay disabled or dying.
Don’t just think about this. Do something to prevent it. Find a good business advisor and build a good transition plan.[reminder]Do you have any clue what your business would do tomorrow if you got hit by a bus today?[/reminder]
3 Ways to Engage Your Upline and Downline Team Members Bidirectionally
Do you feel unengaged in your business workplace? Unengaged with your upline supervisors and chain of command? Or unengaged with your downline team members? Or, worse even still, just totally unengaged in both directions?
Yeah, me, too, in various times during my forty years in business. So I know how you feel, because I’ve sometimes felt the same way, but let me tell you what I found out.
You control the level of your engagement both upline and downline and the success of your engagement in either direction is directly connected to the success of your engagement in the other.
So, in order to be Great! All the time! you need to engage your entire team in both directions. Here’s some tips on how to do this:
Substitute annual (or more frequent) performance reviews with continuous bi-directional conversations.
Talk more often to both your upline and your downline. Take notes (using a mechanical pencil in a paper journal is best, IMHO) of only the key points discussed. Use whatever opportunities to communicate you can create to set expectations and goals, praise success, correct only nicely to repair occasional lapses, and listen closely to the needs of both your upline and your downline to learn how you can help each and all of them do their job better
Encourage specificity.
Generalities are generally nonactionable. Being told, “Frank, I’m just not happy with your performance” and leaving it at that provides no information about how you can do things better. The best response to such a statement would be, “Well, frankly, Frank, I have no idea why that’s so, so why don’t you tell me exactly why you’re so dissatisfied.” (Okay, maybe not quite so smarmily, but you get the idea.) On the other end of the stick, when a subordinate person tells you they are not happy doing what they are doing how they are doing it, ask them to describe in immaculate detail how their practically perfect performance in this aspect of their life would look. And then, listen intently and take notes.
Realize that everyone everywhere in your organization hungers for consistent appreciation, dignity, and respect; so give it to them.
People like being loved at times, but strange as it may sound, they love even more just being liked all the time. Continuous appreciation of other team members leads to better job satisfaction, which fosters better internal and external client/customer service, which leads to better client/customer satisfaction and progress, which leads to more things to appreciate in one big happy continuous circle.
We will talk more about working with both employees and employers in the future.
[reminder]When was the last time you told your upline or downline, “Thank you for letting me work with you another day!”?[/reminder]
The One True Way To Stop Hating Your Job
Have you ever heard someone cry, “I hate my job!”? Or, worse, have you every cried that yourself? Yeah, me, too?
Susan and I hear these words often in our jobs as a family physician and lifecycle lawyer as we try our best to mentor our patients and clients back to a state of balanced health. And, yes, we have even said that same thing a time or two as well. So, we know how you feel, because we have felt that way ourselves. But, let me tell you what we found out.
You never have to hate your job ever again. Never. Ever. Again. If only you will learn to appreciate and enhance the relationship between you, your job, and the rest of your life.
To get you ready to love your job from now own, we need a quick set up of the core principles of my theory of Greatness!, which you can get from my book, Great! All the Time!
- We all have eight types of life’s precious resources: self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people.
- Our lives are nothing but the sum of our relationships with the people, places, things, and ideas with whom and which we have relationships and to whom and which and for whom and which our values make us responsible.
- In order to be Great! All the time!, we have to enhance our relationships in our lives and use our POWER by proceeding only with every resource we have at our disposal.
Why do people hate their jobs?
A recent article in BusinessInsider.com (http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-you-hate-your-job-2014-6) listed the most interesting 17 Reasons You Hate Your Job. They were:
- You picked a conservative career when you were young and never switched jobs.
- You are influenced by extrinsic motivation.
- You feel like you are working for the wrong reasons.
- You are not living up to your potential.
- You feel like your job lacks meaning.
- You feel obligated to work.
- You don’t feel in control.
- You work too much.
- You procrastinate on the important things.
- Your job lacks stability.
- You place a heavy emphasis on work.
- You live too far or too close to your job.
- You don’t like your boss.
- You don’t use your non-work hours effectively.
- You have higher standards.
- You have the wrong mindset.
- You don’t have perspective.
Other surveys taken and articles written over the years show similar things. The ideas flowing through the many thousand-word discussions of these “reasons” have a core reason flowing through them.
People who hate their jobs do not seek and find opportunities to recognize and appreciate the true value of what they are doing for over half of their waking hours each workday not only to themselves, but, and more importantly, to the others around them.
Think about this until next week when we circle back to the business facet of your life and talk about how to do just the opposite of what the job-haters do by learning how to seek and find opportunities to recognize and appreciate that value what you most of the day for most of your days. Here’s a way to get you started and tide you over until then.
Think of your job as a precious resource factory
Your business job is just one big factory through which you invest some of each of your types of resources (self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people) in order to extract out a collectively larger volume of that same collection of resources. If you design and run your job correctly and invest your life’s precious resources in your job correctly, then you will get out of job a positive balance of resources out of your work and an especially enhanced amount of energy, emotion, intellect, property (money!), and (positive relationships with) people.
[reminder]What’s your suggestion for how to find value in your job?[/reminder]
Running Your Own Business – Part 2
In Part 1, we discussed the “big picture” of Greatness! Now, in this Part 2, let’s begin with the end in mind and discuss in just a bit more detail the concept of Greatness!, which must drive you to be Great! in business.
Before we start doing “whatever it takes!” to make you Great! in your own business, let’s agree on our definition of Greatness!
Because you are not with me writing this blog, let’s start with my definition of Greatness! Continue reading “Running Your Own Business – Part 2”