Get Up, Get Out!

Whether you actually set New Year’s resolutions related to your business or not, I think many people find themselves reflecting on what was good and what wasn’t about the past year. Ultimately, our thoughts turn into a wave of ideas about how to make things better in the New Year.

If you’re a business owner or general manager, maybe your goals are more general in nature. You may find yourself saying, “This year I am going to work more on my business, instead of in my business.” In other words, you see the need to work more strategically than tactically to grow your business. Now I have never owned my own business but I have been around many small business owners, and from these experiences I might guess that this is far easier said than done. While we could find many aspects of successful entrepreneurship to discuss, I just want to hit on a couple of things that might be worth thinking about.

What does it really mean to work on your business? According to Erin Duckhorn of EMyth, an entrepreneurial coaching firm, it involves the mindset that “ultimately your business is your product; that as an entrepreneur you’re looking for more than just income, you want a profitable, sellable business model that produces consistent desired results and that is not entirely dependent on you.” For example, action plans are a key component to your business. It’s not practical to think that you can write down an action plan and hand it off to someone else, expecting everything to fall into place. Executing the action plan is where the rubber meets the road.

According to Duckhorn, “Quantification is absolutely essential to working on your business. In addition to writing it down, you have to practice it, observe it, test it—and then modify it based on trying it. And then you keep on testing it until you can get positive, proven outcome. That is how you create a system that produces consistent, transferable results. That’s how you work on your business.”

I was recently speaking to a good friend, Wayne, who owns his own banking software company. I told him about this article and asked him what advice he would give other entrepreneurs and business folks for 2016. He was very quick with his response, saying, “I’d tell them to get up and get out!” He suggests that we all step outside our businesses, to go learn other ways of thinking, to find other ideas for building and growing a successful business— whether strategic or tactical. He said this gives us the opportunity to make high-cut assessments of our business; to be the visionary every business needs.

When he responded, I thought how perfect his comment was for this column because my intention from the start was to end it by inviting you all to the POWDER COATING 2016 Technical Conference in Atlanta, April 11-14. So, take my friend Wayne’s advice and plan to attend this very special PCI event. Check out the details on page 18.

It is truly a pleasure to work with such great people in this industry. I hope that 2016 is a great year for each and every one of you.

Trena Benson, Executive Director
832-367-5173
trena@powdercoating.org