Do you have a business idol — the mogul, living or dead, you’d invite to your dream dinner party?
A lot of the typical contenders, such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Richard Branson, are or were heads of major corporations that experienced mind-boggling success. They were innovators and big-picture thinkers.
Picking their brains about all things business would be illuminating, no doubt. But sitting at the helm of companies that huge means their perspective shifts. It has to. They’re no longer directly involved in every level of the business.
As a small-business owner, you have the arguably more challenging task of being both the big-picture leader and the person in charge of the nitty-gritty, day-to-day tasks that owners of large companies get to delegate.
You might have a manager or two, or crew leaders, but if you’re running a truly small business, you are probably juggling many roles. On any given day, you could be handling the responsibilities of company president, chief financial officer, hiring manager, human resources manager, sales manager, dispatcher, receptionist or even janitor.
There are pros and cons to this, obviously. You may feel stretched a little thin some days. But your finger is constantly on the pulse of your company, and while a lot is riding on your shoulders, you also have all the control.
By being in the driver’s seat, you get to set all the goals for your business, based on your own vision and dream for the company. No board of directors is telling you what to do.
But the negative side is that it really is all on you. You are setting the goals, and you’re also in charge of everything it takes to achieve them.
The day-to-day tasks can start to take over, but you should make it a priority to pause, take a step back and look at the overall health of your business. Do you have reasonable, actionable goals in place? Are you on a path to meet them?
Mitch Kenney, owner of Colepepper Plumbing and Drains (who will be featured in the July issue), has grown his company quickly, and he has even bigger goals for its future. In five years, Kenney hopes to have 100 service trucks on the road and another location up and running.
While your growth plans may not match Kenney’s, he’s doing something any owner can relate to: stepping back to take stock of company processes to make sure everything is scalable and running smoothly.
“Right now we’re slowing down a bit and shoring up our processes — making sure we have a strong foundation and good margins,” he says. “I want to get really good at developing repeatable processes so we can easily scale them in other locations.”
Even if you have no plans to grow larger than your current business — and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that — it’s smart to make sure your current processes are efficient and that all your employees know how to step in to help out if you need to be away from the business for a few days.
It’s not easy to balance the day-to-day business tasks with the big-picture goals, but you’ll find success when you do.
I hope you enjoy this month’s issue.
