The Difference Between Having a Job and Having a Business

By Andy Bailey, CEO of Petra Coach

Most business owners aren’t in it just for the money. In fact, in many cases, they could earn more money, with fewer headaches, working for your average large corporation.

Instead, what attracts most of us to start a business is the need for more freedom. Unfortunately, many business owners end up simply harnessing themselves to another job.

I know. I’ve been there. I owned a wireless business for 18 years. And for the first nine, I was working for this unmerciful jerk I saw in the mirror each morning. I had created myself a job, not a business. And in doing so, made myself miserable. However, for the last nine years of my company, I worked on building a business that could run without me. Not only was I much happier, I was able to create something I could sell and exit – because it could run without me.

And that my friends, is the difference between a job and a business: If it can run without you, you’ve built a business. If it can’t, you’ve simply created another job for yourself.

There are four steps to building a business rather than having a job.

Step One: Develop a strong company culture. You achieve this by finding your company’s core purpose, believing in that purpose, and finding others who believe in it as well. If some team members don’t believe in it, find others who do. Having a strong company culture begins with having the right people in the company.

Step Two:  Develop systems and processes that allow your business to run without you. Many times a company has one or two knowledge-keepers who everyone turns to for answers. That knowledge-keeper is most often the business owner. If you want to free yourself from having a job, the next time an employee comes to you with a challenge don’t just say, “Do this.” Work with them to discover the cause of the challenge, figure out a system for solving it next time without your involvement, and document the system for training purposes. Training is key. (Think, “Teach a man to fish…”)

Step Three: Drive the market to you instead of constantly driving your people to sell more business. This all boils down to treating clients well by showing up on time every time, doing what you say you will do, finishing what you start, and saying PLEASE and THANK YOU. Do these things, and clients will do your marketing for you by telling their friends.

Step Four: Create a strategic plan  – and use it. Most strategic plans are great doorstops and nothing else – because they are never put to use. Making use of your strategic plan requires that you break your priorities down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily activities. (Yes, I said daily.) This process applies to every team member in the organization and at every level. Easy to do? Certainly not. Possible? Certainly.

Overall, we make business more complicated than it needs to be. We expect things to fall into place without putting them there. So remember, the keys to a successful business model are people, planning, process, and profit. Your company can’t be great unless it’s great without you.

Originally published in The Tennessean

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