Are you truly ‘equipped’ to be a business owner?

Think about that for a minute …

Where do people who run a business learn how to run a business? If you are a lawyer now, from finishing university with a law degree, to doing your articles, to being a ‘recognised and practicing’ lawyer internally, to moving up the ranks to being a partner and then director who leads a law firm – where in this journey did you learn how to run a business, as a business person? . It is the same for all other professional service business owners.

If you are a tradesperson, where in the journey of leaving school to doing your apprenticeship, to being “released” onto the tools as a qualified tradesman, to leaving your job and starting your own business, did you learn how to really run a business and what it takes to be successful? Same goes for sales based businesses, franchises, etc.

Most business owners are specialist technicians who are excellent at what they do in their profession, e.g. lawyer, accountant, carpenter, plumber, retail salesman, etc. They are not business people by trade, they are specialist technicians. When you run a business you need to firstly be aware of the vagaries of business, and then develop different competencies in the different areas, or hire people to perform the critical tasks required. If you take the latter option, then you still need to know what to ask them to do and to monitor the effects they are having against what the business needs to do!

As a business owner you need to understand that a business has a chassis or what I prefer to call a “Business Spine”,  that everything operates from, like a body (but I will share this with you in another blog). Inside this ‘business spine’ and in order to function properly, ALL businesses have at least these operational departments (they look different for each industry and at different stages of growth);

• Leadership (where the CEO sits)
• Operations (where cash is truly made)
• Marketing
• Sales
• Finance
• Admin
• IT  (especially these days and this can morph under admin)
• HR (most people morph this under 1 or more places)

The bonus department all businesses should have, but either do not or feel it morphs under a number of places is;

• Product Development (where you innovate existing products or create new ones to serve your market – will discuss in another blog)

Now, where do you learn how to specialise in all these areas or at least understand how they work and how they fit in together really?. YOU DON’T? So if these are the fundamentals of all businesses and you do not really know them well enough or cover them in your business appropriately, are you truly equipped?

There is nothing wrong with YOU not knowing this before this blog and you are not bad or stupid, this is the way 99% of people do it. This is a fundamental reason WHY 80% of businesses go under in their first 5 years. What you really need to consider NOW that you know this is what are you going to do about it? There is a great saying that says “To know something and not to do it, means you do not really know it”, which is very apt in this situation.

You NEED to know this information so you can retire when you want and how you want, while keeping your family safe and protected in the meantime. Teach it Forward is committed to providing you the resources from A to Z which we will be releasing over the next 18 months, so stay tuned.

If you think this book is expensive, consider what ignorance is costing you …

Have an amazing day!

With service

Trent