How To Be A Better Business Owner: Top Tips for Success

Growing a successful business isn’t always easy, nor is it plain sailing. Especially if it’s your first venture. Multiple challenges can beset a new company and an established one, too, and many of them come down to the owner’s inexperience or poor decision-making.

But that doesn’t have to be how your new venture goes down. In actual fact, it doesn’t need to go down at all. If you want to be a better business owner and ensure you are on the right track, then this is the post for you.

Be Passionate

If you don’t love what you’re about to do going into it, then don’t do it. It’s as simple as that. You need to have a love for your new venture and passion to do the work, or else it won’t really take off like you need it to. If you don’t have the drive or passion to make it successful, you won’t have a chance of convincing others to have it either, so walk away before you get stuck into a business you won’t enjoy.

Ditch The Yes People

The last thing you want when running a business is to be surrounded by yes people. These are the people who will back up every decision you make and convince you that all of your ideas are the best thing ever. You do not need this. You need people who will challenge you, who will push you to be the best you can be, and support you in making the right decisions, not just any decisions. Get a business mentor, talk to trusted friends or allies in the business, and get rid of the people who are simply trying to appease you and not help you make solid decisions for the good of the business.

Be A Good Boss

Being a good business owner doesn’t automatically make you a good boss. Some of the best business owners can also be the worst people to work for. But being a good boss can make you a better business owner. Why? Paying attention to and appreciating the type of people working for you can allow you to tap into their skills, knowledge and loyalty. You want a team around you who is as invested in the business as you are and if you treat your employees well, then they will repay this respect back in how well they work for you. As one business owner described, they are only the train; their employees are the steam that powers the train. Remember this and ensure that you are paying attention to cultivating a positive workplace culture.

Be The Customer

Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes can help you to see how people will engage or interact with your business. You need your customers to help you keep going, but if you are unaware of what they want or need from your company, then chances are you won’t be doing very well at this point.

Far from the customer always being right, because spoiler alert, they aren’t. It is about the customer being king, and you need to experience your customer’s journey to appreciate how well your company meets their needs fully.

Build Good Relationships

Good business owners know the value of their relationships. All of them. Be it with suppliers, customers, employees, banks, lenders, logistic operators, and anyone else.

Know what you bring to the table and what your relationship means to you and the other party, and be aware of how your actions impact their business and behaviour, too. Pay your invoices on time, be respectful of their operations and limitations, and strive to build a cooperative relationship that benefits you both.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Great business owners know that their time is valuable, and as such, you need to know what you should be doing with your time. This doesn’t mean you need to let things fall by the wayside. It means looking at what resources are at your disposal to help you do what you do easier without taking up too much of your time.

This could be using fire safety software for fire safety equipment suppliers to keep on top of invoices, quotes, reports, and maintenance. Or it could be using automation to take over repetitive, time-consuming jobs or outsourcing to other parties to ensure things are working as you need them to without you physically having to do it. Look at what will work for you and the business you run and utilise it to your benefit.

Appreciate your Competitors

This might seem odd, but successful business owners are aware of what their competitors are doing and appreciate the space they take up. The reason is that having competition makes you work harder; it makes you push yourself and be better. You can appreciate your competitors and still want it to come out on top. But always trying to win, you will never rest on your laurels, and you will be thankful you paid them attention to help you improve your business and adapt to consumer trends.

Have An Exit Strategy

All business owners need an exit plan. While no one starts a business only for it to fail, not planning for failure can be even worse. As the saying goes, plan for the worst and hope for the best. You need to know how to exit the business in the event of failure and success.

Have a strategy in mind to work out what you will do if things don’t go your way, how you will wind down the business, and what markers will trigger this. But also have a plan in place to move on to something else. What does succession look like, what will you move to when you reach this point, and who do you want to sell to and why? This ensures it can carry on with it’s trajectory even if it’s not you in charge.

Don’t Go It Alone

You need a good support system if you want to be the best you can be. Have people around outside of the business who you can lean on when you need to and allow you to take the responsibility away and get some downtime. Or, this could be an excellent team who can carry the load in your absence. It can be your friends or family who can give you a morale boost, your pets, your workout buddies, or anyone you can confide in.

Learn From Mistakes

You will make mistakes. But what separates a good business owner from one who isn’t really going to last the distance is how you deal with said mistakes. Own your mistakes, hold your hands up, and learn from them. There is no point in denying what happened. Pick yourself up, get over it, learn from it, and move forward. Everything is a teachable moment, including mistakes.

Pay It Forward

Small business owners are the backbone of the country and their communities. You need to remember this when building your empire. You need to make connections in your local area and support others when you can. While it might not be feasible in the early days, doing what you can to help other businesses can help you to build a good reputation. After all, you never know when you might need the help of others, and savvy business owners know the value of building relationships; other local companies can be worth their weight in gold if you need support in any way. So you can preempt this support by offering to help where you can.

As a business owner, you need not make many good decisions. But by doing all of the above, you can ensure you are putting yourself in the best position to succeed.

This is a partnered post.