I know that you are probably thinking ‘I am a business owner’, ‘I have my own business and I think like a business owner’ – maybe and maybe not. I generally find that most coaches don’t think like a business owner not in the way that I am going to talk to you about today. They actually think very much more like somebody who is self employed, and there is a distinction, there is a very big distinction. That is what I want to explore with you today.
Let me ask you a couple of questions.
What do you want from a successful business, what do you want your business to do for you?
Notice the question is NOT what do you want to be doing in your business!
This is an important distinction, because what you want your business to do for you, and what you want to be doing in it, are completely different things, and understanding this is the first step to starting to think like a business owner.
This is a big, serious shift in your way of thinking, to one where you move away from thinking as somebody who needs to earn their income in their business, to a one where you are thinking as a business owner who is prepared to set up a vehicle, ie the business, to generate you multiple streams of income and the means to getting what you want from your business. That almost certainly will not involve you working 12 hours a day with your clients or sat at your computer.
Let’s just clarify what I mean by a “business owner”.
We all understand the role of an employee. They work for money. They exchange their time and effort for a set number of hours per week in exchange for a salary. When their working day is done, they go home and they leave it all behind. Their responsibility is limited to their role within the business. If somebody is a saleswoman then it is her job to go out and make the sales. It is not her job to worry about the technology and the IT infrastructure. It is not her responsibility to worry about the accounts being done, it is not her responsibility to worry about fulfilment of product delivery. All she needs to focus on is her one job.
The self-employed differ from the employed in that the buck stops with them. All responsibility is on their shoulders and they fully understand that. They are the IT Manager, they are the bookkeeper, they are the marketer, salesperson, the fulfilment house, they do everything in their business or if they don’t do it, if they are sensible enough to outsource it, they know that they have responsibility for making sure it gets done.
And you might think that is the shift into thinking like a business owner but it’s not really. You see the self employed are those who are still exchanging time for money. They are still using their skills and their effort in direct proportion to the amount of money that they are making.
Think of a self employed plumber. Unless he is actually plumbing ie on his hands and knees putting bathrooms in or fixing leaky taps etc then he isn’t being paid. He is directly exchanging his time, skills and effort in proportion for the amount of money that he makes.
Now that is not a business, that is a self employed job, and that is what most coaches have, especially if they are relying too heavily on 1:1 coaching. If you are not there to deliver it, you don’t get paid.
A ”Business” is an income producing asset that works and produces income, even when you are not working in it. It is separate to you. Yes, it is something you create from your skills, and it has your personality and vision in it – but it works without you.
The business owner then, understands this whole concept. The business owner understands that if she is only exchanging her time for money she wouldn’t have a business she would have a self-employed job. The business owner understands that she needs to create something beyond herself, a vehicle that works when she is not working in it, that generates an income when she is not working in it.
This is the shift in thinking that I want to encourage you to make, to start asking yourself ‘how do I need to create “The Business” so that it will do what I want it to do for me, rather than me having to work in it all the time?’
[bctt tweet=”The business owner understands that she needs to create something beyond herself”]
Thinking like a business owner really means starting with the end in mind and then reverse engineering what needs to happen and what needs to be in place to get the desired result? That is why I asked you right at the start to think about ‘what do you want the business to be doing for you?’ If you want to have a business that provides you with £X income and allows you to travel etc, what needs to be in place for that to happen? How does the business need to be structured to make it possible?
My little challenge for you is to ask you to step back from your business and view it as something completely separate to yourself, and then decide what needs to happen and what needs to be in place for it to do what you want it to do for you, and also for your clients, with the minimum amount of input from you.
Need some help in making the ‘shift’? Then the Coaches’ Zone Facebook Group would be ideal for you.
Pop on over and take a peek 🙂
