The Three Types of Business Owners Which One Are You?
May 5th, 2021 // 1:52 pm @ Scott Manning
There are three ways you could have utilized last week’s information that I laid out inside of your newsletter. You could have just read it, you could have actually thought about it, or you could have put it work by taking the concepts to really challenge yourself on where you are holding yourself back in mindset, in customer engagement, and even in overall business culture.
To make a big broad general statement here and get it all into perspective, there are also three types of business owners.
You have those who are happy to just “be their own boss” and basically own a job. They may or may not have much ambition beyond that and that’s okay. They work just hard enough to pay the bills and make some money. While it might be a little more than they could get doing it for someone else, it’s not much but the trade off is the lifestyle structure that’s possible by making their own rules. The problem you have is what I call the self-employment trap.
Here’s the thing, if a business owner doesn’t get that there are two major roles: doer and owner. Regardless of who signs the paycheck, there must be value creation from the doing but also value creation from owning. If you just do the doing part, you might as well get a job from someone else.
This ties into the last several weeks of messages about profit and selling where you must find that balance between where you put your focus instead of just being content to collect a paycheck.
And that leads to the next type of business owner which is one step above this and it’s someone who just loves what they do. They have great passion but that often leads them to fall in love with the ‘doing’ of the tasks whether the tactical side of the business as in what you do for money, what customers pay you for.
Now on the surface you’d think this is a good thing and it’s certainly far better than settling just for whatever happens and literally clocking in and out every day.
However, the big problem is this type of owner becomes too emotionally attached to their product and service or in some cases even themselves and the ‘what’ they do instead of seeing the bigger picture of the ‘how’ and even the ‘why’ – which also has to be balanced.
No matter what your vision, mission, passion, purpose is – no matter how you define your why – you’d better balance it out with the gas that goes in the tank and keeps whole thing running – called revenue. Customers are only willing to pay for their way, not the business owners’ why.
Which loops us back to the original place we started weeks ago and technically our theme of selling and profit (and most of all prosperity that permeates this Weekly Newsletter and has for now nearly two decades of my writing it)…
These two different types of business owners are vastly different because one appears disconnected and in fact often sees their business as a burden. They even resent what it takes to make the money and they are always looking for an easier (not necessarily a better) way.
The other is often on fire, even obsessively so and in love with what they do. Yet, they always, and I mean in every single case, eventually get stuck and plateau. They fail to realize that while their skills and abilities have become more valuable, the business and usually their people haven’t evolved along with them. They are now trapped in a model that doesn’t support or facilitate their growth even though they think they are doing everything right.
These people usually become very frustrated and either lose faith in themselves or blame everything on the variables around them not realizing that they have become their own self-limiting factor because of where they put their focus.
Which leads us to the opposite of this and that’s the business owner who works on the business all the time. Always tinkering with something, fixing what isn’t broken, looking for things to solve, and the only constant is change where every idea is the next winning lottery ticket.
This person loves to ‘play business’ and sometimes that’s just obsessing over numbers and reports. They are constantly being consumed with longer and longer hours or more and more ‘stuff’ as they confuse activity with accomplishment.
No matter how hard they try, revenue declines over time and customers seem to lose interest. It’s because they are looking at the pieces and parts of the business as if it’s a computer simulation. They miss the greatest variable and the most valuable asset – the people attracted by the experience of how everything comes together into that perfect engagement between business and customer.
Here’s where I’m going with this…
There are great values in each of these people, each type of business owner, but there are also significant negatives that will sabotage success no matter how great your intentions are.
Just like there must be balance between focus on profit and growth, service and experience, and responsibility to the business and taking care of your people.
There has to also be balance with the hats an owner wears, the lifestyle structure that you have, and how you not just divide your time but also how you prioritize your objectives.
I always say that the most valuable perspective to have (that very few business owners ever even consider), is see yourself as an investor in your business.
You decide deliberately how you want your life to look and how you want your business to fit into it. Then you make the necessary sacrifices and compromises to bring your vision and ambitions to life.
You also have to become a master of whatever you ‘do’ within your business; whether that ‘is’ the business or it is tasks that you never anticipated but now realize you have to do in order to achieve your next breakthroughs.
Finally, that ties into the other part that is the real ownership dynamics of yourself and how you fit into your business and how you execute on your vision.
You are all three, the key is to be the best of all three and not fall victim to the pitfalls of each that holds you back from discovering what you and your business are truly capable of.
What is possible, once all of these are aligned, is literally a multiplier of each individual approach.
I’m going to take you into the mindset and the actions of this ‘ultimate business owner’ next week as we layout strategies to make yourself more valuable to your business and your life.
Category : Blog
