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How to Own a Business, Instead of a Job

Written by: Tim Stokes

Article Overview: Every business is owned by someone who took on a risk with their time and money. So I believe that person should be rewarded. Too often as business owners we forget to enjoy ourselves. We forget that we deserve to be paid far more than any of our employees. Every week for week after week we are often challenged financially. We work 60 hours or more a year and possibly take a few weeks holiday when business is quiet and customers aren't buying. If this sounds familiar I am about to reveal exactly what you have been looking for

How to Own a Business, Instead of a Job

The two things every business needs more of are... team training and documented systems!

No matter what industry you are in I will guarantee you need more of both systems and team training. The reason I say team training and not staff is this. If you keep calling your staff... staff, you'll get staff all productivity out of them! Where as team members is what you want where Training Everyone Achieves More!

here's the difference between staff and team. Staff are reactively trained, Team are pro-actively trained because as a business owner/manager you realize your team is only as good as their level of education. You need to ask yourself what don't they know enough about that I need to train them on so as to increase productivity and profit?

As a business owner I believe you have only one primary role... to lead, teach and inspire your team until they can perform better than you, in every area! You need to be a great teacher of people, not a great technician that knows how to do everything but can't teach it.

Allocate time of half an hour every week pro-actively to train your team until they can perform their tasks better than you.

When all of your team can perform their work as or better than you, what does that make you? Redundant!

The other side is systems.

A system is a documented, method of doing something that produces consistent measurable results by someone by reading and following it.

You need systems if you want your business to work without you so that you know your standards of performance are being met, even when you may not be there for a month or two.

When you empower your team with weekly training sessions and documented systems to follow they take "ownership" of their position and abilities. They get excited about their own potential. They feel a part of the business for the first time because they are allowed to contribute to its growth.

The important systems you need in place so you can have your business working without you are measuring systems.

Measuring your turnover, gross and net profit every day is necessary. If not daily for your industry then weekly. Then summarize that into monthly.

Measure your inquiries, your conversion rates, your average $ sale. Collate this daily weekly and monthly. Then measure your production numbers... how many widgets did you produce or work on in a day, week and month. What value in turnover did you produce.

When you know these numbers and have a means to calculate them with spreadsheets it doesn't matter if you go to work or not, you can tell by the numbers what your true performance is.

This gives you peace of mind knowing your business is operating profitably.

So when you understand business comes down to two things, systems and team training you can start to enjoy life more and wonder what the busy people do who own businesses they have to work in every day its operating!

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Article Tags: business owner, education, half an hour, measurable results, productivity, sessions, staff staff, team members, team staff, weekly training



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