The Most Valuable Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

This is a guest post by Marelisa Fábrega that writes Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.

Suppose you love baking pies and you’re really good at it. People are always saying that your pies are the best in town and that you should go into business for yourself.

One day you get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and you decide to open a pie-baking business as a solo-entrepreneur.   Once your small business is up and running you concentrate the bulk of your efforts on doing what you love: baking pies.

However, you let other vital aspects of your business fall by the wayside: soon, you’re having cash flow problems, you’re working around the clock baking pies since you don’t have any adequate systems in place, and you’re worried because you don’t have a solid marketing strategy. Despite all of your pie-baking skills and your hard work and sacrifice, your small business is fledging.

The scenario described above is what Michael E. Gerber, author of the bestseller The E-Myth Revisited, calls the entrepreneurial myth.  The myth most new entrepreneurs buy into is that the way to beat the dismal odds of succeeding when you start a new business is simply through hard work and perseverance.

So, if it’s not just about skill and hard work, what does it take to make your small business succeed?

Build a Business, Not a Job

Gerber points out that most small businesses are started by “technicians”; a technician can be a plumber, a lawyer, a computer programmer, and so on. When these technicians decide to leave the company in which they work and strike out on their own, they have a tendency to continue concentrating on the work they’re skilled at and ignore the “business aspect” of their new enterprise.

That is, they basically create a job for themselves instead of really creating an actual small business.

The solution, says Gerber, is for business owners to balance their business personalities.  That is, they have to wear three different hats: the entrepreneur hat, the manager hat, and the technician hat. The technician produces the product or service, the manager makes sure that operations and finances run smoothly, and the entrepreneur creates a compelling vision for the business, formulates goals, and steers the business toward the accomplishment of those goals.

Here’s how Gerber defines the entrepreneur:

“The entrepreneur is not really interested in doing the work; he is interested in creating the way the company operates. In that regard, the entrepreneur is an inventor. He or she loves to invent, but does not love to manufacture or sell or distribute what he or she invents.”  ~ Michael E. Gerber

A business that is built and managed by someone who combines the approach of the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur—Gerber indicates–will have a far greater chance of future success than one guided by someone thinking like a technician alone.

Prepare to Sell a Franchise of Your Business

Another way to make sure that you’re working on your business instead of just working in it — is to create a plan or business model as if you were going to sell franchises of your business at some specific future date, even if you don’t intend to do so.

Franchises have procedures, clear operation manuals, a consistent sales approach, and so on. They’re set up so that practically anyone can walk up off the street and run the franchise. This is the goal that you should set for your small business: you want to create systems and then continually improve those systems.

Gerber advices that you get all of the following right while you’re still small:

• Your sales system;
• Your lead generation system;
• Your lead conversion system;
• Your system to convert buyers into repeat customers.

Some of the questions you should ask yourself while creating your systems are the following:

• How can systems be put in place so that large numbers of customers can be served efficiently and consistently?
• How can the business run efficiently without you having to be there constantly keeping an eye on things?
• How can you maximize the time spent doing the things that you really enjoy doing?
• How can you minimize the time spent doing the things you hate to do, but that have to get done

Conclusion

By making sure that you take on the roles of technician, manager, and entrepreneur, and by creating systems and an Operation Manual as if you were going to sell franchises of your business, you’ll make sure that you´re working on your business instead of just working in it.  That is, you’ll be building a small business which will give you more financial independence and freedom, instead of creating a job that will enslave you.

Written by Marelisa Fábrega.  Marelisa blogs about creativity, productivity, and simply getting the most out of life over at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.  Marelisa is the author of the ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists”.

Photo by Lars Plougmann

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