We can’t get to where we want to be with old ways of thinking. Are your old ways of thinking holding you, your team, and your business back?

The difference between employee and business owner isn’t just a status, it’s a mindset. Too often when working with new clients that need business advice we find that they are still stuck in this “self-employed” mindset, rather than thinking like a business owner.

So what would be the mindset of a “self-employed” person? Well they would think that they have to do all the work for the business to survive and grow. If we think about the time that the transition in their life happened from employee to self-employed, how good do you think they were at doing all the work?… the best! Otherwise, why would they have took the risk and made the jump from a safe and secure position, into backing them-self to do it for their selves. In their perception they are the greatest person at doing the thing they do — a great technician.

So new business owners leave their jobs as great technicians, but then they find themselves wearing a lot of hats. They have to deal with marketing and sales, operations, accounts, finance, and HR (pay roll, holidays, admin).

But the point is, when we start thinking about getting leverage, we get leverage through people. What’s the problem with still thinking you’re the best at everything… well, you’re still doing everything! The result of this is that business owners then develop this “super man” mentality where they are the solution to every problem.

The Superman Mindset

Now isn’t it interesting that we go into business for more money and more freedom, but the business owner ends up doing ‘stupid stuff’ that the team could do, when they could be doing high value, high return activities — i.e. growing the business — that would really move the business forward.

This is all mostly born out of this self-employed / superman mentality.

So self-employed is very much about doing all the work and trading time for money. Now, how does a business owner get paid? Through dividends. Think of it like this. Would you have dividends from shares of a FTSE company. The answer is yes. So how much time did you have to work to paid out from the FTSE company. The answer is… none.

So why is it as a business owner we still have this correlation of time with money. Business owners are share holders. There is no time correlation there.

The only time correlation the amount of time that we’re still doing ‘stupid stuff’ in the business.

What do we mean by ‘stupid stuff’, things that are stupid for us to do when we could be employing/training somebody who is very good at doing it, thus saving us time to focus on growing the business.

Stop Doing ‘Stupid’!

Now, it may be that as the MD you have to trade some hours. But, how many hours do you effectively have to trade if it’s structured correctly?

So is it possible to spend one day a week doing the stuff you have to do and the rest of the time having your ream get you the results you want? The answer is yes! And this is is how successful businesses are modelled.

Without this ‘business owner mentality’, business owners remain in this self-employed mentality where they believe they have a to work more hours to become more successful. This then steers them away from away from success because they correlate success with being busy.

Without this business owner mentality it becomes impossible to leverage the growth of profits in your business. So for some final business advice, ask yourself this… how much time are you spending in your business doing the low value technical tasks rather than being a business owner.

To your success,

Andy