Growing Your Business To The Next Level

Peter have been running his business for five years now, when he just started, he was beaming with enthusiasm and was really excited about making his newly started burger shop into a multinational company just like Macdonald! Now, the only problem is that it has been five years and he is still running a single burger outlet, where day in day out he has to be there.

He can’t go on the holiday he dreams of because he has to be there to open the shop every morning and he can’t expand his business because he is too busy managing the day-to-day activities in his own shop. He started to lose his enthusiasm, very soon he lost his dreams and now this shop became just another job to him.

Peter is a typical example of most entrepreneurs who fails after a while and they failed because they depended solely on their own personal skillset and time to deliver the products of services. They are the one ordering the patties, flipping the burgers, attending to the customers, cooking the burger, skinning the potatoes and etc.

These entrepreneurs are in actual fact self-employed where they need to be physically there in order for the business to function. Well, some entrepreneurs are fine and dandy with this but the problem for most other entrepreneurs is that if you wish for your business to grow beyond one outlet, you need to change your strategy.

Being a one man operation is perfectly fine for the start, however as your business grows, your job scope should change too. When I share with some entrepreneurs this story they will start complaining, “But I have tried hiring people! The fries they make just aren’t as good as mine!” And I will ask them, so how is it that companies like Subways, MacDonald’s, 7 Eleven, etc grow their business to a few hundred outlets internationally? Can the founder of MacDonald’s, Ray Kroc be present in every single outlet? What makes the difference then?

The difference is that peter chooses to WORK IN the business whereas the other successful entrepreneurs WORK ON the business! These entrepreneurs never spent their time working IN the business as an employee. Roy Kroc never cooks those fries nor did he spend his time serving milkshake. Instead, they spent their time working ON the business where they build business systems that are so efficient and effective that it can run without them.

Once the system there, they could then hire the best people for the job and this can be replicated into hundreds of outlets all over the world. Now, some of us might think that system building is only needed when the company becomes large enough. WRONG!! System building should start even when you are just a one man operation because if you don’t start building your system, you will never become large enough to need a system.

At this point of time, some of you may be thinking, “I am just a startup and I do not have so much capital to be able to hire people to do the operational stuff. If I don’t do it, who is going to do it?” Of course, when you just started you have to devote an amount of time working as an employee but you also need to plan some time for you to be working on building the business system as well! If you wish to expand your business, you will have to start! If not you will just be an employee trapped in a business you own. You can start by dedicated at least 20% of your times to be working on the business and slowly move it to 60% or even 100% if possible.

Below is a breakdown of Working In vs. Working On the business which will give a clearer picture.

Working IN the Business

• Flipping the burgers, Cooking the Fries, Ordering and Managing the Inventories, Wiping the table, Cleaning the Floor, Serving the customer, Supervising, Doing the Accounts and etc.

Working ON the Business

• Creating an Operations System

o   System to purchasing, preparing the burger, setting the tables, opening and closing of the store and etc.

• Creating a Human Resource System

o   System for selecting, recruiting, training, remuneration, retaining and etc.

• Creating a Marketing System

o   System to produce advertising and layout of advertising materials, customer management, promotions, market research, branding and etc.

• Creating a Financial and Accounting System

o   System to track financial result, profit margin standards, budgeting and cashflow management and etc.

• Other ways of working ON the business includes

o   Innovations on New Products Offering

o   New Technology and Methods to improve productivity

o   Looking into Business Growth

Now that we have identified the difference between working IN the business and working ON the business, the next step then is to find out how to create a system. To write about creating system would require me to write a whole book just to share with you. So, to summarize, a system defined simply is a clearly defined, consistent set of process and procedures that makes it easy for anyone capable to carry out the job with minimal coaching from you.

To place a little more emphasis on the essence of the definition is “a clearly defined, consistent set of process and procedures”, It means that your system should be clear and replicable. To find more about system, it is strongly encouraged to explore what your competitors are doing right and improve from there or you can increase your knowledge simply by reading up more on systems.

Image Credit: Regent