Not recognizing or Ignoring What YOU don’t do well and Not Seeking Help.
Not recognizing or Ignoring What YOU don’t do well and Not Seeking Help.
As a business coach, All business owners think their business is unique and no one can understand it like they do. Wake up! All businesses have a set of clearly defined rules, when understood, make great sense. All businesses have some aspect of uniqueness to them but sound business practices work in every business.
RULE #1: Nothing happens until you sell something.
RULE #2: If you don’t know how to sell, ask for help.
Business owners typically have a strong need to be in control. They incorrectly believe that asking for help is a sign of weakness. This is not true. Business owners who ask for help have a tendency to do better than those who do not ask for help. Look at it this way.
Every Fortune 5000 company has a Board of Directors who job is to help the President with problems and hold him accountable for growing the business and doing what is in the plan. If they have help, shouldn’t you?
Every professional athlete has a coach. Why? Because we cannot be objective about our strengths and weaknesses; we cannot step away and see ourselves as others see us. It just is not possible. If Tiger Woods has a coach, shouldn’t you?
The biggest problem I see is that most business owners do not know how to sell. They have never been trained in sales.
RULE #3: Ask for help.
Many business owners do not know when they are in trouble. If they are not experienced they may not know they are in trouble. Henry Ford failed in his first car company and he filed bankruptcy. Walt Disney filed bankruptcy twice. Thomas Edison had 18 jobs in 12 months. Later in his career he took a $750K loan from Ford to get over some tough spots. I could list many more examples, some famous and some not so famous, who had problems and did not ask for help.
Business owners are busy people and they have a tendency to do everything themselves. After all they can do it faster and better themselves. This is true, initially. What business owners do not understand is that at some point in their business growth they must go from being a doer, to being a manager, to becoming a leader, if they are to thrive and prosper. The business owners who do not make this transition usually sell or lose their company.
I have a client who was promoted to CEO. She said “I could not believe some the decisions that were being made when I the vice president. I thought they we so dumb. As CEO I now have a new perspective for what they were looking at. Those decisions I thought we dumb are not so dumb from this perspective.”
You must understand that not one business owner was successful by themselves. Ford had Firestone and Edison in his mastermind group, Edison and Ford had their team of inventors, Carnegie hired professionals to manage his companies because he knew his strength was not in management but in sales.
RULE #4: Build your team and use them to help you make better decisions.
Not one successful business owner did it by themselves. Everyone needs someone to help them. It would be easy to give you testimonials of business owners who talked about a trusted advisor, a partner, coach, teach, mentor, spouse or others who made it possible for them to succeed. Smart business owners have their own trusted advisors, however informal, to keep them focus on what is important.
The business owners who are results oriented will ask for help. They know they are not an expert in every area of business and they ask for help before they take action. Successful business owners measure everything and their behavior is driven by what works.
Do yourself a favor. Create the relationship with a business coach, mentor, and board of advisors now before you need it, so you can avoid the types of situations that will cause trouble. If you are not sure how to do this call me. I can help with this.
Your business coach
Ron Finklestein
303-990-0788
ron@akris.net
www.rpfgroupinc.com
