CHANGING CONSIDERATIONS WITH EDUCATION
Oddly enough the only reason a business gets to a certain level and does not expand beyond that level is that no one is being creative enough to take it to the next level. Why do business owners stop creating and cease to come up with ways to expand their business?
This is because of their understanding of business and how it works. It does not matter what type of industry the business is, it is the same formula for success that works for everyone. Most business owners know this formula. However, they often build a business by working hard and successfully, with only a couple of the steps of the overall formula in place. The result is reaching a certain level and having difficulty expanding beyond. “WHY IS THIS?” is the question.
When I was seventeen, I bought my first car. It looked good, great color and it was a price I could afford. Within 6 months I crashed it and the insurance company wrote it off as too costly to repair. I bought another car but this time I looked under the hood and decided I wanted to know how everything worked. I pulled the engine out, pulled it all apart, cleaned it all up, painted the engine, cleaned the engine bay and whole underneath of the car, and then put it all back together again. I then had a very good understanding of how everything worked. I changed the oil myself and did any and all maintenance on it myself. I modified the car and upgraded things, I had that car for 2 years and never put a scratch on it. The moral of the story, as it relates to business, is that you have to “look under the hood.” You have to understand everything about a business and all aspects of it. People will have more problems with things that they have little understanding of. A sign that people lack knowledge of something is often their criticalness of it. People are critical of things and people they don’t fully understand.
Business owners will tend to build their business from the part of the business that they know a lot about—what they are most knowledgeable in. Most technician-minded business owners gravitate to the operations part of the business because that was the area that they started the business from and that is what they know well.
So, what slows business expansion down and leads it eventually into contraction? The answer is a lack of understanding in other areas of the business. It’s not good enough for one exec to have knowledge in all the weak areas as he will often battle opposition from the owners and execs that don’t have knowledge in those areas. The solution is to get all owners and execs trained in all areas of a business, this way they will understand the importance of having those areas in place.
AREAS TO BE KNOWLEDGABLE IN:
MARKETING—Public Relations, Promotion, Advertising, and Sales.
FINANCIAL PLANNING—Profitability, Income and Expansion Planning, Accounting, Reserves, and Investments.
HIRING AND STAFF MANAGEMENT— Legal, Human Recourses, Payroll, Bonuses, Staff training, Apprenticing, Motivation, Productivity, and Management.
QUALITY CONTROL—Customer surveys, Continuing education, Staff correction, Product improvement.
The difference between a large business and a small business is that, in the large, the owners are happy to let others do the work and run operations. In a small business, the owners are not as willing. The trust factor in others is higher in a large business than in a small business. Just as easy as it is to see that a person who is able to take orders themselves will be able to give orders successfully to others. A person who is trained well in subjects will have more confidence in training others in those subjects.
Life and livingness is all about considerations and education. So as a recommendation, make the decision to get yourself trained in the above bullet-pointed subjects. There is always something we can learn that can help us all change our considerations and move things to a new and improved level.
Email or call me at 727-243-1336, and I will give you data on where to start your education journey!
Sincerely,
Graham Payne
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