Stop Building a Job, Build A Better Business!
When most of us decided to take the plunge and start our own businesses, we hoped that the success would bring us the freedom to work on our own schedules, financial abundance, and fulfillment in knowing that we are making a positive difference. Unfortunately, when you look at the actual experience that small business owners are having, it is quite the opposite.
Business owners are tied to their computers and phones at all hours of the day, struggling to make ends meet financially and doing everything other than what is most inspiring or fulfilling. So what’s missing? Why is there a giant gap between what we expected running our business to be like and what it’s really like?
Stop Building a Job, Start Building A Business
Most entrepreneurs are confused about what it takes to build a business. We have grown up thinking that the primary ingredients for success in business are hard work, intelligence, maybe a dash of luck and, of course, clear thinking. All of that is true, but the problem is that most entrepreneurs are applying their hard work and focused thinking to the wrong things. Ask yourself this: Where am I applying my hard work? What is my thinking really focused on?
So what should you be doing instead? The answer is to work on your business, not in your business. Focus less on doing the work, and focus more on building systems and processes that are designed to do the work for you. Building systems is the work that is the actual building of a business. You will never perform enough services or sell enough things to build a business, because those things have nothing to do with building a business. Take the McDonalds brothers for example. They (or, actually, the guy who bought the brand, Ray Kroc) built systems for burger flipping, fry frying, hat wearing and napkin dispenser refilling, which is called the McDonald’s Operating System. McDonald’s is one of the top ten most valuable brands in the world because they built a business, not a way to flip more burgers.
Without having a system in place for your processes, there won’t be any consistency. Every interaction with a client or prospect will end up a little different, with each person having a different experience. Some people will walk away from the interaction feeling confident in you and your business due to the professionalism that was maintained, while with others may feel that they can’t trust you with their business and end up working with one of your competitors. Creating consistency with your interactions by putting processes and systems in place will make room for systems that are delegate-able, measurable, improvable, scalable, automate-able, and sellable, and will help you to continuously have great interactions with clients or prospects.
What Makes A System Good?
A good system should clarify the steps required in enough detail that anyone qualified to do the job would be able to accomplish it by just reading the existing documentation for it. Having documentation for processes helps to escape the impromptu scrambling that most entrepreneurs face and can then be categorized according to their place in the Customer Lifecycle. The Customer Lifecycle is a map of the most basic goals of your business, which is to attract potential clients, convert them into customers, fulfill your promise and encourage your happy clients to refer their friends.
To stand apart from other businesses, you have to be good. Systems need constant improvement, and one of the best things about having clear documented systems is that they are naturally built to be improved. This doesn’t mean that you need to change your processes just for the sake of change, but rather to change them for specific reasons. You have the opportunity to change them if something breaks, something changes, something is learned, and/or after a deep dive. One of the greatest benefits of systemization that can help you to become a more efficient business, is discovering how to automate the systems you create. Automating your systems will keep you on the path of building a better business and keep things from falling apart as you grow.
Go ahead and download your free copy of Building a Better Business now, and make this project a priority. It will take time, but having documented processes makes the value of your business, and the experience you have running it, so much better.
