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Running A Business, the start!

When I find a business that is in trouble, it is almost always a result of one of the critical areas of the business failing!  If you are having trouble with your business, read this post carefully!

What is important is what I do with the company after I buy it to turn it around!

These tactics can work for any company and if you have a viable product and follow these tactics, no matter how small your company, you can see success.

Every business I have bought have certain tasks or departments that must be taken care of to make the company run properly.  Some small business owners may refer to these as hats.  A small business owner may wear different hats during these tasks.

The departments or “hats” that I find in every company are as follows:

  • Communicating hat ( Customers and policies).  What happens in your company that involves communicating with the customer?  This includes answering your company phone, but how else do you communicate with your customers, such as newsletters, etc.
  • Bookkeeping hat.  this involves anything dealing with money.  Taxes, accounts payable, accounts receivable and day to day bookkeeping chores are some samples
  • Producing your product or service hat.   All the things you do to manufacture a product, resell a produce or provide a service.  It may include meeting with the customer to setup the order that has already been place (if it is meeting with the customer BEFORE the order is placed, then that would fall under marketing), packaging a product, and even shipping a product are included.
  • Marketing and sales hat.  Anything you have to do to find customers and sell to them.  This could also be designing a brochure, building a website, meeting with potential customers, attending networking meetings (like the chamber networking meetings), and a host of other duties and tasks.
  • CEO hat.  This is running the company.  This is the hat that in almost every case, you should wear and be the only one to wear it. What do you do that only you can do to run the company.  This involves leadership!

Over the next few days we are going to look at each of the above in detail and find out how to do it better!  We will start with the CEO hat.

But first, download a form called business hats.  Put your company name in the top box.  Put your name where it says CEO.  Now at the bottom in the box marked “Your Reality”, write how many hours a week you actually spend working your business.  Include everything you personally do in all the above functions (and other functions if your particular business has more).  Include time on facebook if you are using facebook as a business tool.  EVERYTHING YOU DO!

Now in the box marked “dream”, write how many hours you would like to be working in your business.  For most of us, I am sure that will be less than your actual time, but for some, you may be working another full time job and long for the day you can quit and spend more time in the business.

For me, I have most of my businesses that I only need to spend 4 or 5 hours a week and make a full time income from them (we are not talking about multi-level marketing business, but real businesses).  My goal is to only work 2 or 3 hours per week for every one of my businesses.  So write down your goal.

Keep this form handy, as we will be using it for the next week or so.  Also, use this form for just one business.  If you have more than one business, do this process for each business on a seperate form.

Tomorrow we will look at the CEO hat most small business owners wear in detail.