11.2.3 Build your business - Jordi Kidsune

1. How to become a business owner

Are you running your business or is it running you?

Here’s what it takes.

Wear a variety of hats

Though the goal is to build a cross–functional team that can handle most aspects of your business without you, this won’t be the case in the beginning. As a new business owner, you will find yourself answering phones and mopping the office floor in addition to making presentations and landing big deals.

You’ll likely need to learn new skills as well, like accounting and reading financial statements. A business is only as strong as the psychology of its leader, and there’s no shame in admitting that you have weaknesses. In fact, it’s essential to ask for help when you need it or even outsource some work so you have time to focus on what really matters.

2. Make personal sacrifices

A business owner will have to make some short-term sacrifices to grow their company. This could mean long hours, missed vacations and putting extracurricular activities on hold. However, the bigger picture is that this effort will help you achieve long-term goals.

Remember that there is no such thing as work-life balance – there is only work-life integration. When you’re doing what you love, your work and life are naturally integrated. And once you’ve built your business and found ways to increase profits, you can enjoy the freedom you’ve earned.

3. Invest in yourself

Think that becoming a business owner means making big bucks right away? Think again. Most new business owners end up investing any profits in their companies rather than paying themselves. In fact, the answer to “How much do you pay yourself as a business owner?” is often “Nothing” in the first few years. According to Fundera, 30% of small business owners take no salary at all, and 83% pay themselves less than $100,000 per year.

As a business owner, you may be required to invest some of your savings in the business as it grows. However, just as the personal sacrifices are usually short term, so are the financial ones. You’ll have some lean years, but when you’re doing what you love, it will be worth it. And once you grow your business beyond the infancy and teen phases of the business cycle, you’ll achieve both financial and personal freedom.

4. Focus on what’s important

When you look at the business owner definition, you’ll notice it does not include putting out fires. A business owner focuses on top-level issues like creating a positive organizational culture and developing new strategies to increase customer loyalty. You create a compelling vision for your company and inspire others to follow you through that vision.

Don’t get wrapped up in details. A business owner’s job is to guide the direction of the company by building strong values and a culture of innovation. The details can be left to your team.

5. Build the right team

A true business owner maximizes his or her business by leveraging not only their own ideas, but the abilities and strengths of the talented individuals around them by building the right team. You certainly need to have your own leadership skills, but you also need to strategically hire so that, over time, they can step into major leadership roles and handle the day-to-day operations of the business without you.

Ensure that you have a team you can trust with this “baby” you have poured so much love and passion into. Otherwise, your business will always be limited by what you as a business owner can personally do each day and you’ll always be stressed. If that’s the case, then you don’t have a business – you have a job. You’re restricted when you have a job that you have to be at every day, but you’re financially free when you have a business that can effectively run without you.

Does becoming a business owner seem a little overwhelming? This doesn’t mean you can’t do the things you love or be a part of the business. By all means, you can still be the operator where it makes sense to be the operator. But allow yourself and your business to thrive by making this necessary shift in your mentality.

Channel the great traits of an entrepreneur and have a vision in mind for your company. What’s your ultimate goal for launching your own business? Chances are, it was to experience greater financial freedom or to have more time to focus on the things you love, like your family, interests or worthy causes. Keep this end goal in mind as you make the shift from business operator to business owner.

Are you a business owner? If not, will you become one? Learn more about what it takes to be a business owner and spend time with others who are working to build their own businesses. Shift from a life of stress to a life of freedom by attending Business Mastery

2. How to build a $10M business

Further exploring

Take a look at Kerpen’s 10 key strategies and learn how to build a 10-million-dollar business.

Find trustworthy partners

2. Create a strategy and focus

3. Say no to what’s off focus

4. Find peer support

5. Form a board of advisors

6. Hire slow and fire fast

7. Build great values and culture

8. Build your brand

9. Ask for referrals

10. It’s the people

Additional strategies for building a business

Educate yourself. Successful business owners are lifelong learners
Get a business coach.
Find your passion.
Develop successful recruiting practices.

3. Business Chokeholds to Overcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNFzTvrrmJQ

Henry Ford quote, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Find the unspoken assumptions

2. Challenge the unspoken assumption

3. Identify what you would do if that assumption is untrue

3. How to make a massive action plan (MAP)

Creating your Massive Action Plan

When you’re creating your MAP, ask yourself, “How much?”, “By when?” and “For what purpose?” Then write it down. Make it a permanent, tangible expression of your mental target and then get ready to take massive action. The “For what purpose?” question is the key to make it all work because, as any good life coach will tell you, it connects your values and emotions to your goals. If you are not able to visualize, verbalize and write down why you are pursuing a goal, it’s likely you have not formed the connection needed to make it a reality.

When you’re ready to put your business action plan into place, it’s time to take the next step. This exercise will help you solidify your purpose, focus on your desired result and mentally prepare for action.

Exercise: Are you committed to take massive action? Complete your own Massive Action Plan in the graphic below to help you stay on track.

4. Provide More Value Than Anyone Else

The 4 keys to Constant and Strategic Innovation

Unlock and Unleash Your Power to Create Progress

Pinpoint what’s blocking your company’s path forward. All the motivation in the world is useless without insight into your—and your company’s—method of operation, and why your vision could be at a standstill. Use your business map to understand where your products are now and to clearly define where you want them to be.

2. Make Your Target Innovations Compelling

Only when you have a compelling vision for the future of your products, services and delivery will you be able to effectively hit your target. Come up with powerful reasons to innovate. And, remember innovation comes in many flavors—it’s not just about high-tech advances or efficiencies in your process. You can innovate how you approach your relationship with your customers, or add a new voice or perspective that sees your products and services in a new light.

3 Link Your Product Features to Your Sales Numbers

The world’s most successful companies are constantly examining the relationship between their products and buyer behavior. Are there ways you can adjust your product to encourage higher frequency of repurchase? What changes can you make to increase your number of customers and dollars per sale? Incremental improvements can generate geometric sales growth.

4. Strategizing Should be an Embedded Skill

A quarterly pow-wow isn’t enough. Strategizing must be a part of your company’s culture, the same way customer service and quality control are deeply embedded in your processes. Innovation is really a daily habit, whereby you constantly reassess what your customers need now, and what they will need in a few years. It requires anticipation, and a determination to never stop identifying new opportunities to serve your customers better through fresh and inventive approaches. These four principles can help you create a state of constant and successful evolution in your business. Innovation doesn’t have to be glamorous.

What business am I in?

Your first answer will probably be the obvious one. You’re in the business of developing software or constructing homes or providing professional services. But when you stop there, you’re not digging deep enough. There are thousands of companies that develop software, build homes and do taxes. What makes you different? With a business map, you’ll connect your business to your passion – which is ultimately what gives you the hunger to succeed.

What business am I really in?

Knowing what business you’re really in means having a deep and thorough understanding of your customer and the value they gain from you. This is your X factor. It’s the way that you provide more value to your customers and clients than anyone else. And it’s what guides constant and strategic innovation in your industry and your business.

How is business now and how do I want it to be?

Asking “How is my business doing?” when creating a business map is the next step to achieving your overall goals. Once you really understand how to consistently offer more value than anyone else in your market, you’re in a better position to identify where you are now, and what it will take to get to where you want to be.

When you’re asking yourself how you want your business to be, think beyond revenue, profits and numbers. Connecting values and purpose to your business map will not only help you grow and create a better experience for your customers, but it will also ensure that you, your partners and your team members will be happy in the workplace. As every good leader knows, their business can’t succeed unless they have an engaged team that is deeply connected to their cause.

5. Aligning and leverage

The power of leverage Get ahead with time, achievements, connections and more

5 assets you can leverage for maximum achievement leverage in business

1/ Leverage time

2/ Leverage achievement

3/ Leverage connections

4/ Leverage your talents and skills

5/ Leverage your education

Podcast to grow your business with leverage

https://www.tonyrobbins.com/podcasts/vault-tony-robbins-jay-abraham-part-1/

7. Whats your business x-factor

https://www.tonyrobbins.com/career-business/how-to-make-your-business-talkably-different/

Creating an X factor requires a combination of skills, psychology and experience to find your competitive edge. To start, honestly answer the following questions:

What makes your company stand out?
How do you offer your customers the most value?
What is your company great at?
What makes you stand out individually?
What could your X Factor become?

7. Why businesses fail

Further epxploring

Not having an effective business plan

2. Not putting the customer first

3. Not hiring the right people

4. Doing it all yourself

5. Lack of flexibility

6. Lack of innovation

7. Not understanding your industry

8. Fear of business failure

9. The wrong mindset

10. Lack of vision

11. Lack of passion

12. Ineffective marketing strategies

13. Not understanding your X factor

14. Asking the wrong questions

What are your business saboteurs? How your personal issues impact your business — in a big way

“Saboteur” is the term we use to describe the mental and emotional patterns that dictate your decisions. Saboteurs affect your thoughts and behaviors and are the negative processes that make you sabotage yourself.

Discover your saboteurs:

https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/

Now that you understand what saboteurs are and have taken the saboteur assessment test, it’s time to look at how these same saboteurs invariably threaten the health of your business. Here are the various types of saboteurs and how your personal saboteurs could be affecting your business or career.

The Judge

The “Judge” is divided into three categories: how you judge others, how you judge yourself and how you judge your circumstances. The way your judges are divided reflects on how you are running your business. Here’s how each of your judges are making an unfavorable impact on your company.

Judging Yourself – If you’re judging yourself, you have the tendency to feel like you’re not enough and that you are not doing enough – it’s a form of personal torment. This is causing you to place high (and even unrealistic) expectations not only on yourself but on your staff. Expectations are good, but realistic outcomes should be the main objective. If your staff feels like they can’t live up to your expectations or give you feedback for fear of a negative reaction, you will always have a revolving door of employees and will never turn your team into raving fans.

Judging Others – If you scored highest in judging others, you are fostering a work environment full of judgement. This is not only by your own judgment of others, but that of employees judging each other — because they are, naturally, modeling you. With that kind of attitude, you are causing chaos in your company. When employees are judging each other, they are not working congruently and productivity is lost.

Judging Circumstances – Sometimes circumstances are something you cannot necessarily change; you can only change the way you look at them. When you judge your circumstances heavily, it becomes your main source of anxiety. Your peace of mind is disturbed when you can’t accept circumstances because you’re too busy judging them or waiting for the “perfect” situation to arise.

In the workplace, you are never pleased. You think that when you reach a certain outcome then you’ll be pleased. But, every time you reach that point, your moving target eludes you, and there is yet another thing that has to be accomplished before you can be happy.

When employees feel they can never please their employer, it will lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair, and they do what they have to do to get by rather than giving it their all. The last thing you want in your business is a staff that does the minimum just to please you because they feel they will never meet your expectations.

You are a perfectionist. The only problem is, you will never be perfect. No one can be perfect. Your constant need for perfection brings out your sarcastic, irritable and critical side and no one wants to be victim to that behavior – not your employees, and certainly not your business partners. You’re playing the Stickler saboteur role without even knowing it. Your constant berating causes tension, frustration and a tense working environment – and that creates a counterproductive workplace with all sorts of other problems in tow.

Pleaser

You put yourself second and others first, which causes you to lose out on your vision and miss your own outcomes. Are you running your business or are your employees? More than likely, it’s the latter. Unfortunately, trying to please everyone cannot happen if you want your business to really be successful.

Hyper-vigilant

The constant fear and anxiety you have about your company is preventing you from taking your business to the next level. Your fear is stopping you in your tracks, and it’s affecting your business. Not only that, but your constant worrying brings with it a draining energy that nobody wants to be around. Your business is bogged down by your behavior and lack of progress. No one wants to come to a depressing work environment every day, so team morale is low, and many people have one foot out of the door.

Restless

You tend to be a scatterbrain and have trouble being content with anything, be it in your professional or personal life. You like frequent change, but if you are to have any accomplishments in your business, you need to see things through to the end. Halting projects, starting new ones and then jumping back into old projects again is counterproductive – and it’s slowing down your company’s progress. How much more can you accomplish if you have a singleness of purpose?

Controller

You create a lot of anxiety within yourself, but also in others, in order to get your way. And though things may work out for you sometimes, your behavior can make others resent you. This resentment makes others not want to put their best foot forward when they’re collaborating with you. They will let you run the show even though they may have ideas that rival your own. In the end, it’s about making your company a success, and you cannot control every aspect of that journey. If you try, it will not turn out as successful as it could be.

Avoider

Things happen for you, not to you. Unfortunately, you seem to see it the opposite way, and this is the relevance of an Avoider saboteur. Instead of turning lemons into lemonade, you avoid any problems that exist, which escalates the issues – and soon your gift turns into a problem. If you are unable to get to the bottom of various issues and make them work for you instead of against you, you’re only slowing down the progress of your own company’s success.

Hyper-achiever

You’re an achiever, and that’s great. However, you need to learn how to acknowledge your past successes instead of basing your happiness on the next success that hasn’t happened yet. If you can’t be happy until you achieve your next accomplishment (and even then, it’s short-lived), then you risk pulling your employees into the same cycle of only being happy when achieving. Life isn’t all about achievement – it’s about being happy with making progress along the way.

Life (and business) has ups and downs, and those shouldn’t solely be based on your next achievement. If not, it only creates a work environment of people feeling that they are not good enough and they are not doing enough, which is affecting your employee morale. You cannot worry about tomorrow, only today. There is no reason to be miserable on the journey to reaching your next goal, so be sure to enjoy the process, too.

Victim

Nobody wants to work for a Debbie or Donald Downer. The “poor me” mentality gets old very quickly to those around you. If the only way your staff can get through to you is to placate you on a constant basis, they will feel like they are your babysitter and will be frustrated in that role. The result will be difficulty keeping quality talent, or worse, those that do stick around will eventually take your victim mentality as a weakness and then take advantage of you as an employer. Employees need a leader, not a victim.

Hyper-rational

You love to analyze every situation and that limits the emotional connection that you have with others. Instead of leading with feeling, you’re relying solely on logic. Your employees feel judged and disconnected and your business suffers because of it – often resulting in them leaving because they cannot deal with you for the long term. Most employees are spending more time with you than with their own families, so having a little emotional connection is okay; it may even help you build a stronger, tighter team.

The incredible thing is that you don’t have to be overcome by your business saboteurs. Everyone has areas they need to improve upon, but by acknowledging what’s holding you back and deciding to move forward, you’re already leagues ahead of your competition.

How to identify customer pain points

Determining what causes your customer pain points is an ongoing process. Your business will change as you grow, and the needs of your customers are going to change as well.

With that in mind, here are some questions to help identify where you can best help your customers:

What is your biggest current challenge?
What has prevented you from overcoming this challenge?
Would a product or service that is or is not currently available help you solve that challenge?
What takes up the most time in your day?
What roadblocks prevent you from achieving your top two business goals?

When you ask open-ended questions such as these and deeply listen to the answers, you can identify the pain points that will help you innovate better products and services and successfully grow your business. It will also help you learn which questions to ask yourself and your internal staff to identify your own business pain points.

8. Redefining Risk

How to Hedge Your Bets When Starting a New Business

The idea that entrepreneurs must quit their jobs to show dedication and have the time and energy to build a business is a common trope, but it's not always true. Many successful entrepreneurs, like Steve Wozniak of Apple, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, and Phil Knight of Nike, practiced hybrid entrepreneurship, meaning they kept their jobs until their start-ups were evolved enough to become safer bets. The myth of entrepreneur as risk-taker has the potential to discourage potential entrepreneurs and investors who perceive caution and risk aversion as negative traits. Instead, aspiring entrepreneurs should identify the specific risks they face and determine how best to mitigate them. Keeping a job while starting a business can alleviate the pressure to be successful and make peace with potential failure, and the risk is greater in not trying than in failing.

10. Don’t compete. Create.

While disruption is a way to seize new growth, it is not the only or wisest way.
The concept of non-disruptive creation, which is when a new market is created where none existed before.
For example the life-coaching industry as an example of non-disruptive creation.
Value innovation, rather than technology innovation, is what allows companies to create new market space and dominate them for years.
Focus on how offering can make buyers' lives more productive, less risky, easier, less complex, more fun, or meaningful or more environmentally friendly.
Shift focus from competing to creating.

11. How to exit your business

https://youtu.be/K4CaG_lRK18

12. 20 inspirational business quotes

1. “Optimization simply means that you take a bunch of little things that don’t seem to be very difficult to change and all of those little changes have a multiplying effect and you get a giant change from all of those tiny changes.”

2. “If we’re going to build a business, we not only need raving fan clients, we need a raving fan culture. Culture meaning everybody on your team works to create raving fan experiences. You’v3 got to create raving fans if you want to be successful.”

3. “Management is focusing on getting someone to get a result. Leadership is producing a standard in someone that when you’re gone they will live by to produce higher level results consistently.”

4. “Passion is found in the field of the unreasonable. Anything is possible if you are clear about what you want and you have strong enough reasons and a real action plan – if you have unreasonable expectations for what will be required of you and you are willing to meet them.”

5. “The price of ignorance in business is obsolescence. Obsolescence in business in short order means extinction.”

6.“Willpower by itself is not enough. If we want to achieve lasting change, we must have an effective strategy.”

7. “Any time you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values.”

8. “Knowing you have failed to live up to your own standards is the ultimate pain, knowing that you have fulfilled your highest vision is the ultimate pleasure.”

9. “What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”

10. “Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.”

11. “Changing an organization, a company, a country – or a world – begins with the simple step of changing yourself.”

12. “Three decisions that we all control each moment of our lives: what to focus on, what things mean and what to do in spite of the challenges that may appear.”

13. “[Y]ou should never leave the site of a goal or an idea without figuring some way to apply it immediately. That gives you power. That’s how you build momentum.”

14.“There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream or desire a reality.”

15. “Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”

16. “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

17. “I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.”

18. “Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.”

19. “The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.”

20. “My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain – and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.”

The sky is the limit with your business as long as you can tap into your driving force. Your guiding force is based on knowing what you believe in and making the decision to go after it. When you understand that life is about creating meaning, you will see that you hold the power in the palm of your hands.

Want more inspirational business quotes? Find more Tony Robbins wisdom in The Screening Room.