Driving With The Handbrake On
Entrepreneur’s Disease – Symptoms & Cures
Check-List: More than three, call the Doctor!
- I am impatient with others at least several times a week.
- I wake up at 3am to have enough time to worry about revenue.
- I have business debt which exceeds 20% of my annual revenues.
- My spouse (or employees) just don’t understand how big a job this is.
- I’m working twice as hard, making half as much.
- If I wasn’t here, this place would close in a month.
- I can’t seem to attract – or keep – the right staff.
- I’m doing tasks I don’t like and am not very good at.
- I am working more than 10 hours a day.
- The people I hire come late, leave early, and do drugs at lunch.
7 Mistakes that can hurt your business
1. Not having a vision, either for your business or yourself
2. Lack of financial management
3. Putting up with mediocrity.
4. Failing to see DELEGATION as a critical element of successful leadership
5. Failing to allocate TIME for yourself and your family, so that you can have a life beyond your business.
6. Not having a SUCCESSION PLAN or EXIT STRATEGY – and not knowing the difference.
7. Assuming that because you are good at some skill or trade, you’re automatically qualified to run a business.
Are You Ready To Kick Some Bad Business Habits?
1. You’re working too many hours: are you ready to work a whole lot less?
2. You’re ready to make a lot more profit. It’s not enough to love your business. You need to balance risk and reward.
3. You’re ready to build a team to help your business go forward, whether you’re there or not.
4. You need to fall in love with your business again – to rebuild the vision and passion you started with.
5. Your business can’t grow unless you grow. If you want what you haven’t got, you have to do what you don’t do. Get growing!
6. You need an accountability partner, someone to demand a profit, to push you past your stops, and to congratulate you on your successes.
7. You can use a coach, someone who’ll help you get where you always knew you could go.
On the next page – Two Entrepreneurs each work 10 hours a day, with totally different results!
One spends: 1 hour on “CEO Time (planning, thinking ahead, etc.)”
4 hours on Managing – telling others what to do.
5 hours on Employee work – doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it.”
Is this pretty normal?
The other does the reverse.
Which one are you?
How CEO’s use their time each day!
CEO 1
| % Time | Day Hours | $/hr. | Delivered Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEO work | 10% | 1 | 300 | 300 |
| Manager work | 40% | 4 | 50 | 200 |
| Employee work | 50% | 5 | 15 | 75 |
| Total | 100% | 10 | 575 |
CEO 2
| % Time | Day Hours | $/hr. | Delivered Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEO work | 50% | 5 | 300 | 1500 |
| Manager work | 40% | 4 | 50 | 200 |
| Employee work | 10% | 1 | 15 | 15 |
| Total | 100% | 10 | 1715 |
Annual Summary
CEO #1 = $172,500
CEO #2 = $514,500
Most all of us fail to delegate – and who will quarrel with us? Well, I will!
The fundamental cause of small business failure is not because the owner/CEO doesn’t do enough, but because he/she does too much of the wrong thing.
In our next installment, the “vision thing.”
