Learning to Run Your Business

By David Bullock

Learning how to run your business is one of the hardest lessons to learn. Many times we are working someone else’s business and not our own business. We may have false expectations for outcomes and exercise bad judgment in anticipating how long the process is going to take. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone…believe me.

These are common and very big mistakes that keep people running in circles for years.

Let’s take a step backward, though, and look at things through a wider lens.  Sometimes the simplest things show us the greatest lessons…

This past weekend my little girl learned to ride her bicycle. It was one of the happiest moments in her life and one of the proudest in mine.

She had to physically learn how to do this. She couldn’t read a book, couldn’t listen to an MP3.  I couldn’t tell her how to do it. She had to actually do it.  There were no “great new breakthrough” ideas and no new tool to help.

Simply put, she had to do the work – find out how her body would work with the bike, learn how to not fall down, and so on. 

She couldn’t pay any amount of money for someone else to do this for her. If she was going to learn this skill, she would have to take the time and effort to learn. No shortcuts.

My daughter decided this “learning to ride a bike” thing seemed like it should be simple.  Why? Because she’s seen the other kids on the block jump on their bikes and appear to effortlessly glide by.  The other children look like experts and make bike riding look so easy.  “So what is there to learn?,” she asked.

What she didn’t know is that there are a bunch of simultaneous processes that have to be managed while riding a bike:

• Steering
• Pedaling
• Braking
• Speed Control
• Negotiation of Obstacles
• Safety Equipment
• Equipment Maintenance
• Environment

Also, the new bike rider has to be willing to learn to ride, meaning: be willing to fall down not just once, but over and over again. Then try another method or technique.  Fall down again. The learning bike rider has to be prepared to keep trying until that one day when it all comes together like magic, and – BOOM – the rider can just ride effortlessly. From that point on, riding is easy. You never forget.

Riding a bicycle, then, from the most basic perspective, is simply the matter of “learning how not to fall.”

In your business right now, you are learning to:

• Manage the direction of your business
• Provide the resources required
• Filter the right business opportunities
• Know when to stop
• Know when to start again
• Put the right people and equipment in place
• Manage your environment
• Manage your marketing channels
• Manage your sales channels
• Properly assess new opportunities

The only problem is that the business environment is always changing. Competition is always moving. Pricing is a variable. People change and move on. Opportunities come and go.

At first, you are running your business to simply not be unprofitable.  You ideally then move to a position where you earn a profit; with continued success, you move to a position of even greater profits. 

The whole continuum is always moving, but there is a fundamental principle that always stays the same.  I see it play out time and time again in life and in business.  Once you know what to do and think – unless you somehow forget – you really know what you need to do and think, until that point where you encounter a situation that requires you to do something new or apply new thinking.

The question is:  are you doing what you know?  And how much is really new? 

Media may change. People may change. Technology may change.   But is it really new? Or is it more of the same stuff, just reconfigured, or made smaller or faster?

Once you know how to get the right customer for your business, you must service the customer per what your business can provide and what the customer wants, and you will always be in business. Now, getting this done is not at all easy. There are a lot of moving parts, for sure. But that concept is the basis that this whole commerce thing is built upon.

Just like riding a bike. Once you know what you can and will do, the right customers will show up. You will be confident in your offer to the marketplace. Your clients will gladly pay for your products and services because you are clear on what you offer and the clients are clear on the value they receive from you.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  But how many of us are really clear on our offer and how we are going to fulfill that offer for our client?  This is easier when you are selling products, as the product itself is the offer. The product does this or that, and it’s pretty cut-and-dried.  As you move to selling a service – where you do something to produce a situation for the customer – this at times gets a bit complicated. Stuff happens. Time and environment work against you.

With the sale of a service, there are specific and important questions you must ask yourself before you open your offer to the marketplace:

• How do you know when the scope of service is done?
• What does success on this project look like for you?
• How much time do you really need to get the service completed?
• How much do you charge?
• Who is going to do the work?
• Can you outsource any portion of the project?

These questions should and will come up as you shape your offer.  Take the time to answer them carefully and honestly so that you are best positioned to successfully service your clients. 

These days, riding a bike is easy compared to running your own business. There is hope for you, though, once you master the basics and see some success. Running your business can become like riding a bike. You just have to remember that you are the only one who can ride the bike, just like you are the only one who can and should run your business.  Not your clients, your employees, or the environment in which you operate.

You should run your business and know what you are running. Once you know what to do, and do what you know, this business thing might become a bit easier.

What do you think?

Are you running your business? Or is your business running you? And are you doing what you know?