What it Takes to Run Your Own Business

It takes a lot to run your business. It requires a special personality and lots of skills. A successful business requires attention to a number of functions to be sustainable and successful. Read on to learn about what is required and some insights on what to do.

A Special Personality

Running your own business requires careful thought, lots of personal energy, both an internal awareness of what’s important to you, as well as an external awareness of what’s important to your customers. It’s almost impossible for someone who has never operated a business to know everything that’s required to get the job done right.

Besides all of the personal elements required to run the business, you also have your specialty: whether it’s a medical or wellness specialty, or a specific skill to deliver valuable services to your clients. Frequently, skilled professionals are not taught how to operate their business while at school learning their skills and profession. They’re left to fend for themselves after they’ve graduated with their degree.

What it Takes

Besides delivering your services, you have to look after:

• Operations: Create and manage business processes, rules, and infrastructure
• Personnel: Hire, train, and manage any people required
• Marketing: Attract prospects and keep customers coming back
• Sales: Help customers with decisions and make better choices
• Customer Service: Deal with customer issues and build loyalty
• Billing and Finance: Charging customers and collecting money, bookkeeping and tax filings
• Product Development: Continuing education, creating new services and products, and bringing them to market

For each of these items, rate yourself on a scale of 1 – 10, with one being you haven’t a clue where to start and 10 being you do this for a living. Anything less than an 7 or 8 means you need to have an expert look after this area.

And if you can charge more for your services then you pay to hire out these functions, then you have no business doing them yourself. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Do it Yourself?

Many professionals struggle with operating their business by splitting their time between delivering their services and doing what it takes to operate the business. The problem is the skills required to deliver their services are often very different than the skills required to operate the business. For example, a physician that operates very successfully by determining what is wrong with people and fixing them may not make a good manager or leader where you need to identify and develop what’s right with people.

Hire?

Some will hire a business manager and then let them hire and manage the people required. Unless your business is doing more than a few hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue, this probably isn’t a good option.

Outsource?

Outsourcing is a common method used by entrepreneurs and small-office practitioners. For example, it’s common to use a professional such as a CPA to oversee business processes. Yet frequently business owners stop short of outsourcing all of the necessary functions, like sales and marketing. Take a look at these areas to see where you can get a strong return on your investment and grow your business.

If you’re willing to outsource your business functions, we can help with growing your business. We can teach you how, coach you through it, or do it for you. Explore BijaCo.com to learn these skills or get help getting the job done.