As a business coach, I love my job. I get to work with business owners in all sorts of industries in all kinds of locations across the world. I mean, these are some of the most creative, positive and resourceful people on the planet. What’s not to like?
Many people are driven to open their businesses because of a specific passion, not the desire to “do business.” This means you often have business owners who are pretty talented at creating their products or providing their services but have little business education. That does not make them bad business owners, but it does mean they could be much better business owners. And being a better business owner is critical to owning a better business!
A common thread I see time and again across the most successful of these business owners is that they demonstrate three essential skills:
- They are very good at managing their money.
- They are very good at managing their people.
- And they are very good at managing their time.
If you’re thinking, “Well, I’m not that good at one or more of these skills,” I have an important message for you. None of the business owners I’ve met were born geniuses with these skills. They are all learned skills, and anybody can learn them with the right coach😊.
To give you some insight into how these skills manifest, let’s examine some of the tactics and habits that the most successful business owners use in these three areas.
1. Managing Money
What you don’t measure, you can’t improve. That is true of everything, including results that produce your income—sales.
The best business owners receive regular reports on everything they need to know to run their businesses successfully, and they pay attention to what those reports tell them.
You need to gather everything you need to know so that you can regularly analyse, understand, and take appropriate actions to improve your business’ performance. Know the key performance indicators (KPIs) that need to be measured to assess your business’s performance and create a dashboard of those metrics.
Here’s the best way to determine your KPIs.
Think about what information you would need if you could only have a one-hour weekly conversation with someone in your business, and that conversation had to inform you of what is working and what isn’t.
When you look at that dashboard, you will be able to identify the activities that need to be ramped up to perform better, earn more money, and keep more of it.
You will also be able to reasonably forecast where your business will be financially one week, month, or year from now. Once you have an understanding of what is working and you have a forecast, you need a plan.
If you do not have a revenue & profit plan and an associated tactical marketing plan, you will be hard-pressed to get where you are forecasted to go. You also won’t be sufficiently prepared to weather any economic storms that come your way.
2. Managing People
Running a successful business isn’t all about money. Proper business ownership means the development of leadership, communication, and delegation skills. And what happens when you lack those skills? You don’t get the culture that you want; you get the culture you deserve.
In other words, the team that wins the league or competition is often the team with the best team culture, not necessarily the most talent.
Want a team of the right people doing the right things, right? Show up with good leadership, excellent communication, and the ability to delegate tasks to the proper people.
When you create a culture that doesn’t foster enthusiasm, high-quality work, and loyalty, you wind up with people who won’t hunker down with you in times of hardship. If you want people on board and with you for the long haul, become a better leader!
Get them involved in understanding your values, goals, and strategic plan. Foster open communication and ensure that each person is assigned to the areas where they have the most to contribute. Encourage their participation and help them learn from their mistakes.
Establish a proper team meeting rhythm. Use daily check-ins, weekly huddles, and regular longer-format sessions. Allow everyone to share what is working, what is not working, and what needs to happen next. When you involve your entire team in this way, you improve your culture and foster a drive to succeed. You also end up with a well-oiled machine where everybody has a specific purpose, and redundancies and inefficiencies are eliminated.
This is not an exhaustive list of the areas where you can further your business skills as a business leader, but it is a great starting point.
3. Managing Time
The vast majority of business owners I speak to have one thing in common: they have too much to do and not enough time to do it—or so they think!
Want to become one of the best business owners in terms of time? Shift how you think about time…and how you manage your time.
You are the perfect result of your calendar, and calendars never lie. If you’re not getting the results you want from your business, then it is at least in part about how you are spending your time.
Think of an elite track and field sprinter. There is no denying that they are passionate about their sport and likely naturally gifted. However, let’s say the sprinter says they have set a goal to shave half a second off of their best. But they spend time looking for sponsorships instead of training for speed; they won’t get there.
So, what should they do? Hire someone, an agent, to look for sponsorship deals so that they can spend their own time working towards their goal of running a faster sprint.
It is the same for a business owner. You need to think about the results you want, what activities directly produce those results, and how much of each activity is necessary to reach your goal.
From there, you can build a calendar for each day, week, month, and even year that will get you the desired results.
Everything else is delegated or takes a back seat.
When you set yourself up for success from the perspective of your calendar and manage your time correctly, you get more results and become a better business owner.
I help my clients become better business owners by working with them through the 5 Steps to Freedom roadmap for taking business owners from business creation to financial freedom.
If you’d like to quickly become one of the best business owners, consider business coaching. You can book a complimentary 15-minute call with me at www.TimeWithShane.com. In those 15 minutes, we’ll determine whether you are good to go on your own or if you could use some help.
