Are You a Smart Business Owner?

Which business owner sounds familiar?

Business Owner #1:

Having your own business means more money, free time and life on your own terms. Business #1 means freedom!

Business Owner #2:

Having your own business means struggling to pay the rent, working night and day and trading in one boss for a dozen or more. Business #2 is a prison!

One of the businesses above is a smart business and the other is a stupid business.

Which one do you have or want?

Each and every business owner falls into one of these two categories whether they like it or not. They are either prospering and have all the free time in the world, or are struggling to take one vacation day out of the year because they haven’t found a way to work themselves out of their business.

But here is the kicker…

Every business goes through these two stages as they build and grow.

Now with that paradigm shift in mind…

The key differentiator between a smart business owner and a stupid business owner is that the smart business owners focus on being in the #1 category from day one, building systems and processes that can be managed by someone else. The #2 category business owner never takes the time to strategically plan key “smart business moves”. In fact most stupid business owners aren’t even aware of those smart business moves.

As you transition from stupid business to smart business, your business will go through five critical forks in the road. Each one leads you to a business that sets you free (a smart business), or a business that traps you, or worse, bankrupts you.

The choice is yours!

Decision #1: Will You be Accountable?

Anybody can start a business. But not everybody will have a Smart Business

In the beginning of your business, you’re probably doing everything yourself, And it is proven fact that everything will not turn out the way you planned no matter how much you plan in advance.

This is the first moment of decision, the first fork in the road.

Will you blame someone else?

Will you make excuses?

Or will you step up and claim responsibility?
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As your business grows, and you add others that are directly responsible, will you still hold yourself accountable for the actions of your business?

Smart business owners take responsibility for everything that happens in their business no matter what. This is the first bright line delineator between smart business success and stupid business failure.

Another aspect to holding yourself accountable in your smart business is by maintaining clean and clear accounting records…even if you aren’t an accountant.

Accounting has the same root word as accountability. You can’t be accountable without good accounting. Establishing the habits of good record-keeping and, even more importantly, learning how to read the story of your financial statements is a crucial skill all smart business owners share.

Learning how to understand your company’s financial statements could very well be the most significant section of “Smart Business, Stupid Business.” Without knowing or understanding the “financial story” of your company, you might get lucky, but you’ll never have a Smart Business.

Decision #2: Will you Trust Yourself, and Others as You Build Your Team?

As you focus on building a smart business you won’t be able to do everything yourself, and will have to bring on more people to serve your clients and customers with superior products and service.

There is no possible way you can do everything yourself in your company so stop trying…

So knowing that you will be hiring people to run your smart business think about this…

What holds an employee back from starting a business?

The emotion holding the employee back is fear. It’s fear and the need for security that keeps her working for someone else, putting all her dreams to create something special on hold.

What holds a self-employed person back from hiring others?

The emotion that holds the self-employed person back is distrust. The theme song of a self-employed person, to quote Robert Kiyosaki, is “Nobody does it better.” Why? Because the self-employed person’s distrust in other people’s character and abilities stops him from letting anyone else close enough to be part of the team.

You can have a solid self-employed career with never passing this second fork in the road, but you won’t have a Smart Business with all its potential.

Instead, you have a job with a lot of bosses, only you will call them clients.

But, there’s a problem.

There is just as much danger in letting go of your company too soon. You might get the wrong people in charge and they won’t share your values, or your ethics, and in no time flat, you’re back running the company or else you’re going to lose that business.

That’s not smart either!

To easily and quickly solve this problem…

You need to effectively work ON your business and not just IN your business before you let go. That means you need to avoid the $400 billion problem facing business today – employee theft. And you need to have efficient and reliable systems to increase your business’ ROI (return on investment).

When you have the action steps laid out, chapter by chapter, it becomes easy to make your business a smarter business. Follow the “Smart Business, Stupid Business” guidebook!

Decision #3: Will You Take Actions for the Benefit of the Business?

At some point, your business will begin to take on a life of its own. As your business, grows knowing when to take specific and focused actions to help maintain and protect your business is just as important as starting it in the first place!

As it grows…Will you let it live?

Or, are you going to keep your business small and under your umbrella?

Chances are you started your business because you had a great idea or because you were really good at something. Or at least, you had to have something other than just plain desire to have a business to stay in business.

Face it, if you’re in a business that lasts that must mean you’re good at something and the marketplace rewards is rewarding you.

Are you ready to now let the business grow beyond you?

Can you take an action even if you don’t understand every part of it?

Can you trust advice from advisors who have more knowledge and experience than you do?

As your business grows beyond the Business Survival stage, there are strategies you need to implement to let your business grow that you may not be aware of as you start to see success.

Can you let go to do that, and do you have a team that supports you in that phase?

There comes a time when you’ll need to call up legal and tax advisors like US TaxAid Services to protect your assets and save taxes.

Will you let your company grow through each stage, all the way from just beginning to legacy? And, are you ready to follow the action steps in “Smart Business, Stupid Business” to create a solid foundation at each stage of your business?

Decision #4: Will You Continue Learning and Improving as a Business Owner?

If you ever wondered if lawyers and CPAs had a special language; well, you’re right. In fact, so do bankers, insurance agents and all the other advisors you’ll add to your team as your business grows.

You don’t need to know how to do everything your advisors do. In fact, that would be pointless.

It’s said that it takes 10,000 hours to master a subject. So, if you want to now be the expert in a dozen or more specialties, you’re going to be looking at 100,000 or more hours. So either your business slows to the pace of you, with you being the bottleneck (contrary to Decision #3) or you need to find a way to talk to all these specialists and get them on your team.

You need to hone your skills as a business leader and that means understanding the language of finance, law, accounting, investing and more. It doesn’t mean doing it yourself, but it means being literate in the language.

Smart business owners know that knowing the language of the professionals they will hire at a later date is a key component to smart business success. If you can’t intelligently speak with your advisors about how they will help you, what makes you think you will be able to build a company that grows with you or without you!?

The best way to learn how to talk the language of business is to do it!

Immerse yourself in business books that educate you on the practical aspects of your business. Learn the difference between an S Corporation and a C Corporation and how the type of benefit plan you choose could make you rich and give you ultimate asset protection.

These specific types of topics are what we talk about in “Smart Business, Stupid Business.”

Take the time to learn and understand more about running a smart business and you will put more money into your pocket, and protect your portfolio of assets along the way.

Decision #5: Will you Allow Your Business to Fulfill the Promise of Your Dreams?

There will come a time when it all starts to work. You might need to tweak this and that along the way, but for the most part, your Smart Business is just going along.

You have your own Financial Scorecard, based on the “Smart Business, Stupid Business” template, so you only need to review one page to know whether things are working or need a change.

You have advisors you trust and you can communicate with, you have good systems and you’ve even figured out your exit strategy, which you’ll execute as soon as the business valuation reaches the level you want.

In fact, you have your business value growth plan started right at the beginning after going through the tips to increase your business.

This is probably the most critical juncture for a business. If you’re a visionary entrepreneur, you’ve likely gotten bored along the way. You might have been tempted to blow up the business so you can build it again.

In fact, the biggest risk to your business right now could very well be YOU.

But, it’s also the time when your business can create a legacy. Along the way, there are plenty of choices and sometimes things will work, and sometimes they won’t.

Isn’t it nice to know you have the resources to get through all those changes? That’s what having a Smart Business means. You don’t have to do it alone.

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