Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

What is your job?

When you own a business you have many jobs. At least you have many tasks. You are the idea person, the company cheerleader, marketing maven, the financial guru, customer relations expert and much more.

And in any small company with staff that is stretched your employees are multi-tasking as well.

During the day you need to make the most of every hour. That means minimal staff meetings during prime customer calling hours…it means traveling very early or late at night so you have the bulk of the day to conduct business…it means concentrating on making actual business happen with clients, customers and so on because they won’t see you on weekends or after hours.

Time management, money management, and people management are all jobs you have.

Who is setting up new contacts for business? Who is buying the new equipment or training the new staff person? Who does the budget and the payroll? Is anyone checking the numbers to see where you are against where you should be?

When you are an employee other people do these things so you can concentrate on just your job. Not so as a business owner. No one has your back on a job not completed.

My most successful business had between five and ten deals up in the air at any given moment. I was looking at new prospects every week, and signing one up every four to six weeks to buy or sell. We had three partners in the business when I founded the company. And each one of us was traveling the country juggling many balls throughout the week. When was the quiet time to share information?

Every Sunday morning we had a conference call. It lasted an hour to as many as three hours. Each of the three partners gave a rundown on every deal and meeting from the week before, and talked of what needed to be done to make a buck over the next seven days of work. There were no excuses for missing the conference call. We talked, listened, battled a little, and learned from each other where our business was. We also produced a weekly report for every deal and submitted it to every “Party of Interest” in the deal. Bankers, lawyers and owners all knew where we stood with their deal because we shipped that report out every Sunday night via fax or email. You see, our job as owners was to manage the business towards making money.

If you have no partners it makes it easier for you to have that Sunday morning meeting with yourself. Go over what you did last week and what you better do this week to move the ball down the field. If Saturday works better, than do it that day. But…you job is to know at all times where you are and where you need to go or your business will flounder…and success may elude you.

• Posted: 12 November 2007
• Comments: 1
• Category: Business success

Comments