There are relatively fewer barriers these days when it comes to establishing your own business. With our world in the midst of the digital age, we’ve seen more and more new ones popping up in everything from coaching to subscription boxes.
With the increasing number of businesses being created, however, that means the number of failed businesses has also skyrocketed.
The reason? Everyone’s a Want-repreneur: throwing spaghetti at the wall, keeping their fingers crossed that something will hopefully stick. They’re unorganized, uncertain, and just generally unfocused.
Business is anything but unfocused. The ones that thrive get to where they are because they are certain of what they offer, clear of their direction, and courageous enough to say No to things that don’t make sense to them. They also know which actions bring in the most results, and they are not afraid to think and talk in numbers.
If you want to be like them, to skip the spaghetti and move quickly to turning a profit with a sustainability plan in place, you’ll need the following three things:
1. CEO Mindset
This is the mindset that will help you paint a very clear vision, a precise picture of what your business might look like after the first 100 sales.
Most want-repreneurs miss out on this because they are focused on immediate gratification, whereas the CEO Mindset is all about the long-term gains. But, running a business is not simply a game of who sells the most the fastest.
If making sales is the only thing you care about, start a garage sale or go on eBay and sell your junk. #justsaying
If you really want to have a successful business, you’ve got to remember this: you are not pushing products to the market. You are inviting others to share in your vision, your mission, and your passion.
Disney is a perfect example. They’re 100 years in the making and still going strong because they haven’t lost sight of who they are. The vision they shared with the world in the beginning still exists 100 years later. Their passion for bringing joy and sparking imagination to offset the mundanity of life is still very much present.
In short, you can’t simply look at your business as a cash-cow. It’s a world that you’re creating, an ecosystem, a legacy in the making.
When you’re able to integrate the CEO Mindset, you’re able to clearly articulate and share that vision, mission, and passion with a varied audience. Once you do, others will be able (and excited) to invest in your ideas, bank on them, and hold that vision for themselves to such an extent that it becomes nearly effortless for you to turn that vision into reality.
2. COO Execution
There is a reason why some people are promoted quickly within a corporate structure while others stay where they are. Not everyone knows how to work smart. Many love to focus on the tiniest details… which also tends to bring the tiniest results.
A COO, on the other hand, understands which details deserve attention and which don’t. They know where to focus, and leverage the proper points for the greatest results.
For your business to thrive, you’ve got to learn how to execute like a COO, and that starts with knowing which steps to focus on. There is no point in doing more things if those things don’t deliver the highest ROI (return on investment on your time, money, and energy).
To get started, reflect on the following:
• What is your key offer?
• Which social media platform is your focus?
• Which avenue of creation is the starting point?
• How is monetization possible?
• What gives the highest ROI (Return on Investment of time, energy, money)?
A lot of energy and resources are often mis-channeled into efforts that produce little to no results, leaving many beginner entrepreneurs feeling overwhelmed as they try to do everything Richard Branson does.
They don’t realize that they’re wasting their time on things that can come later on in the business. The COO perspective helps you to see what needs to be done and when, so you can maximize your efficiency.
Some honest points here:
The color of your pen doesn’t really matter, especially when you know what you’re selling. The paper you buy has no bearing on whether or not a customer will pay your invoice. The number of times you post on Facebook doesn’t matter if your content isn’t speaking to the right audience.
Businesses are about milestones. Integrating the “COO Execution” will allow you to focus on the key steps to take in order to reach that first milestone. It will show you how to measure the efficacy of your steps, and how you can move from the first milestone to the next, and then the next after that.
At the end of the day, you can’t just be talking big. You need to DO BIGGER.
3. CFO Oversight
Many want-repreneurs get paralyzed when it comes to thinking numbers. Everyone likes to talk about the dream — and how they’ll make a lot of money with the dream — but when it comes to sitting and sifting through numbers, they freeze.
The ignorance and/or resistance of numbers are what break an endeavor.
What separates a business from a hobby is making the numbers work for you. This doesn’t mean that your business is only about numbers. Your business can be all about doing so much good in the world… but you can’t ignore the numbers.
Think about this: if you want more formal recognition of your business, meaning you want “serious organizations and people” to acknowledge your business as a “serious business,” the only language they understand is numbers. This goes for VCs (venture capitalists), investors, banks, and the government.
Even NPOs (non-profit organizations) are all about numbers.
If you don’t have the skill to know what your numbers mean, hire someone. Ask someone to teach you and walk you through it, because your numbers are so much more than simply cash-in and cash-out.
There are a great many more factors to consider if you want to run a successful business. You have to understand which of those numbers are long-term investments, sunk costs, recurring expenses, profit, and so on.
Numbers show you the value of an investment. Numbers show you the value of the effort you put into your campaigns. Numbers show you the value of a potential employee or teammate. Numbers show you the value of a client. And numbers are what will protect your company moving forward, because numbers are what will keep you sustainable, healthy, and on your way to becoming a legacy.
Incorporate these three ingredient s— CEO Mindset, COO Execution, CFO Oversight — and you can stop throwing spaghetti at the wall as you gain the clarity, certainty, and know-how that your business deserves.
I promise that things will start sticking all on their own, and you’ll see yourself go from being a want-repreneur to being a real entrepreneur.
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This article originally appeared on Maria Tan.
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