Thinking like an owner

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Just because you own a business doesn’t mean you are actually thinking like an owner…..

This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.

If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.

I was talking to a solo-entreprenuer the other day.  He was staying very busy, but not making much progress on his business growth and recurring revenue goals.  The mistake that most starting entrepreneurs make is the speed of their transition from “worker bee” to “thinking like an owner”.  They stay busy doing the tasks to keep the business ‘afloat’ that they are not doing the things that allow their vision and business to grow.

Some of the mistakes my friend was making was:
1) Doing everything himself.
Take EGO our of the picture.  Just because something needs to be done, doesn’t mean you have to do it.   Hiring part-time assistants, or collaborating with affiliates and partners are some solutions.
2) Not thinking ROI on the things he was doing.
Even though he was spending time publishing articles and speaking at various engagements, he was not collecting any sales leads.  He ‘felt’ he was reaching a potential of 1000 readers — but he had no way of consistently reaching them or understanding what topics or services they could be interested in.
3) Not thinking about up-sales.
He had no product or service (outside of his manual time) that could be sold 24-7.  He wasn’t taking the time to product-ize the things he was doing over and over again, manually.  He was not using his current articles and speaking engagements to up-sale and promote his on-line products and services.  He wasn’t taking any marketing strategies to building, sustain, and retain his current clients.  He didn’t have any follow-up products and services that lead this current clients from introductory to more advanced services — to retain and sustain his current client base while also growing his referral base.

Typical entrepreneur excuses:

  • I stay busy, but am not reaching anyone new.
  • I have a great speaking opportunity to expose myself to people I haven’t connected with before, but I am too busy with the daily running of my business to create the  materials and products to access this group.

 

Being busy is a positive affect of your great work. On the other hand, it can often limit your success because the busy-ness constrains what you can really do with your potential empire. If you would like business coaching assistance on how to expand beyond the activities you are handling today, please keep my business coaching expertise in mind.
Thinking like an owner:Every action should be positioned to give you positive revenue results.  Giving speaking engagement without prepaving for up-sales, product sales, or additional sales leads (in the form of new customer contact information and database growth); is not ‘thinking like an owner’.  Staying busy with “worker bee” activities without tying it to marketing and sales goals is not ‘thinking like an owner’.
As for creating up-sale products –an up-sale product can be as simple as:
  • a free introductory consulting session or evaluation (by phone, skype or visit)
  • a free in-house customized presentation for their department or company
  • a free subscription to your “already produced” newsletter, blogs and/or articles.
As you see, these sample product ideas don’t need any up-front preparation or time-energy — but can lead you to future sales and client contacts. Sometimes we feel we are too busy and that ‘busy-ness” limits our imagination on how we can actually do more with ease.  Just because we are an ‘owner of our own business’  doesn’t necessarily mean that we are ‘thinking like an owner’.

Homework:  Review the items that you are currently doing.  What would change if you actually ‘thought like the owner’.

Try it and let me know what you think.

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If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info