Lead By Example and Embrace the Leadership Role:

Many people become business owners out of passion. They believe so much in their products or services they risk everything to build a business around that passion. Before long they find themselves working endlessly in their business. With employees to manage, customers to serve, and the pressures of growing while remaining profitable, finding time to focus solely on improving business operations is lost. And at this stage, if not you, then who is going to lead the business into the future?

Cultivate A Business Culture You Design:

As a business owner, the person most responsible for its success or failure, your business has a culture. Most notably your identity. But since it can't talk itself, you have to do the talking for it. Unfortunately, many small business owners are notoriously silent when it comes to sharing what they’re thinking. They have a direction in mind, but struggle putting into words to share with those who can help. If your team members don’t understand the direction you have in mind, chances are they’ll find their own ways of doing things.

Keep Score and Manage by the Numbers:

Don’t you love playing games and competing with your friends for bragging rights? So do your team members! Businesses often fail to take advantage of this innate desire to win by not effectively measuring results during the month. If the only goal is a monthly revenue goal and it’s measured after the end of the month, by then it’s too late to make adjustments that could have affected the results. How will your team know if they are winning or losing during the month and adjust accordingly?

Thinking & Acting Strategically:

Getting things done in your business requires having a process, following a system, essentially connecting the dots in a logical manner. That doesn’t always happen in a small business environment. Instead, business owners learn about something that’s working in another business, tell the team this is what we’re going to do, and then expect them to implement it. More often than not the results are only so-so. There’s a good chance the strategy isn’t going to stick. This is called “winging it” and then hoping it works.

Meet More Effectively:

Having clear communication in your business and with your team is crucial. Meetings can be effective, but too often they turn into meeting stew where business owners try stuffing too many topics into a single meeting that lasts too long. Top priorities are often overshadowed by too many topics and participants leave without clear direction on the most important things. The result is boring meetings for both leaders and participants, and then they cease to happen.

Become More Attractive with a Strong Marketing Message:

It’s a very noisy world these days. Consumers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every day. If your business doesn’t have a marketing message that stands out from all the rest, your ideal customers are never going to find you. If the marketing message sounds too much like all the others, your ideal customers are going to choose the low-cost or popular alternative. A general marketing message might attract customers, but probably not enough of your ideal customers.

Become A More Focused Business Leader:

Making time to work ON your business is a problem most business owners have faced and it’s not an easy one to solve. When I say working ON your business, it’s the quality time you devote to thinking strategically, planning the future, analyzing results and discovering trends, uncovering bottlenecks and identifying solutions, and orchestrating changes necessary to keep it healthy and growing. And as the leader of your business, it’s your role to be strategic, analytical and forward thinking.