Having a business and owning a company is something that can give you life. It not only provides you with the wealth you need to live your life, but it also provides you with the purpose and value that you add to the world around you. The only problem is that owning a business can take control of you. The stresses of any business can overwhelm you and make you feel like it is not worth owning the business. It can feel like it is not worth it. There are, however, ways and means of overcoming this. The one way of doing this is to start from day one knowing that you own a business, but it doesn’t own you.
The business is yours and you are fully in control of it. Let’s face it, you can be the enemy of your own self. You need to ask yourself several questions before you get started. What is it that you are looking for in a business. What is it’s structure going to be like.
Will you create or buy? So, ask yourself the following:
- How do you set up a company?
- How do you buy established businesses?
- How do you create models that you can sell like franchising, partnering or networking?
- How do you make sure that business gives you life instead of taking your life?
Below is what I learnt to create a self-sustaining business and to keep that company on track.
Create Business Blueprint
By this, I don’t mean a business plan. By this I mean knowing what the business is going to look like when it is complete. You will need to know everything about your business, what it will look like, what it will achieve and how it will function when you are just getting started.
You need to know that when it is running, if you are going to create 100 branches, or employ a thousand people. But in saying this, even if you are the business owner, it is not only about you. This is where the next step comes in.
Organisational Structure
Your business is all about the people that you employ to work for you in your business. You need to know that everyone in the company are business owners. As the CEO, you do wear multiple hats and, especially starting off do need to know how to do various jobs. But you will soon be employing people who will be performing those functions.
So, whether it be sales, marketing, finance etc., make sure that your organisational structure is fully in place. And you can do this by showing the employees how you want your company to run.
Make it Duplicable
One of the easiest ways of teaching people how you want your company to look and what the blueprint must look like is by making your work duplicable. As the CEO, wearing the multiple hats to start off with, you can document what you do to teach the person who will be running with the function. You need to be able to document whatever you do. People can read and do the same thing and by doing that, you are teaching people.
Look What Support is Available for You
One of the things that business owners forget is that they don’t need to do everything by themselves all the time. If you take some time to research, you will see that there is actually a lot of support out there for you. The taxation system is one of the structures that can help. Take some time to research the incentives you can find in the tax system for example. Consider the tax system seriously, it was a system put in place to help and support the rich corporations to stay multinational.
Tax does not benefit the rich most of the time. So, if you are wanting to grow your company into a multinational, find out how to make the system work for you. You can also look for support from other avenues. Shareholders, government, the community etc. Keep looking bigger!
Fund Your Business Properly
This is where the next point comes in. Once you know how big the company needs to be, you can start understanding how to be attractive to investors. You might say that you want to self-fund it, however one of the benefits of investment is that you are put under pressure to deliver.
If you are just starting out, and don’t have much to show, use the blueprint to attract investors. I’m going to tie this in to what I have said previously, you need to attract people to yourself to attract investment into your business.
One of the interesting things that I learnt is that if you cannot sell your business to someone else, you are the only one buying into it.
All of the above will mean that you are not the only owner in the business. If no-one is buying into the business, why are you buying it? You are then forgetting the second rule, about duplication. Once you create a duplicatable system, and documenting everything, you are making progress in the development of your business. This will mean that you have several people buying into your business and you are not alone investing in something that others won’t.