What do you do?

You are not a carpenter.  You are not a basement repair contractor.  You are not an electrician or a limo driver or a hair dresser.  You are not the person that does the work.

You are a business owner.  

Right?

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Businesses don’t get stuck, people do.

If you think your business is stuck, it’s because you are.  Make a decision, take the action.  It’s as simple as that.  But our refusal to make a given decision or take a given action (because, because because) is where the branch of progress stops.

Are YOU stuck?

What is profit?

Your group provided a product or service, collected what you charged for them, paid all your expenses, and look! – you have money left over!

Didn’t have any money left over? Aww man! What happened?

Did you not sell enough?  Did you not charge enough?  Did you spend too much delivering?

What happened?

The loner becomes a group leader…

Often entrepreneurs start alone.  They find they can move quickly and get things done as they want.  The only communication they need is the incessant voice in their head.

After experiencing the success that only one person can achieve, they hire people – and everything changes.  Progress per person slow down, and the staff can’t hear the voice in your head anymore.  Making the transformation from hyper-efficient worker to leader is our Rubicon to cross.  

If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, you have to go together.

What got you here won’t get you there

There are many steps in the stairway to (or towards) the top.  The strategy we used to get from the first step to the second, is not necessarily the strategy we need to go farther.  In fact, that very same strategy/habit/system/method may be just the thing preventing us from going any farther.

What strategy worked for you before, but needs to be abandoned now?

Pay your bills on time

If I have to pay my bills eventually anyway, why would I wait 60 days or even 30?  If I have the money in my account, I pay my bills as soon as they come in.  Yes – I do this in business, too.  Why sit on extra cash if I have payables?  The preferred relationships I build with vendors are worth more than any interest value on the money.

It’s also great financial feedback – I’d rather find I’m low on cash and low on payables, than one day find I’m low on cash and have lots of payables. (Yeah, yeah, you should see it coming with financial statements and other KPI’s.  Yes.)

You made a deal.  Pay your bills on time or before.

Building value in YOU

In the end, you are your wealth.  Build it.  Build you.  

Keep learning and building positive relationships.

How do you learn today?

You MUST make a profit

If you want to help people, add value for your customers or change the world with your business, you can do that without making a profit.  The house has more money than you and if you keep losing money, you’re an unhappy goner.

No matter what your business does and no matter how well, you must make a profit doing it.  

If you are not making a profit, rearrange your business so it does – right now.

Avoiding Micromanagement

Tell your people what you want – the results you want them to get.  Let them figure out how to get there.

When people don’t feel micromanaged, and trusted to use their own creativity they will be happier and more engaged.  And often they’ll come up with a better way of doing it than you knew!