The Words That Should Never Be Said By A Business Owner

 

The transcript of the video....

Many of you will know that I actively seek out new learnings and experience and i get a lot of ideas and inspiration from a place called the EC run by a serial entrepreneur called Nigel Botterill. 

He is very good at what he does and his only failing is that he follows Leeds United.

To be fair I get loads of inspiration and ideas from you guys.

Anyway he shot a little video the other day talking about the words that should never be said by a business owner..... 

I watched it and it really resonated with me.

So what are the words you ask...?

I'll tell you in just a minute because they are important but the point of the video is 2 fold, share the words of advice from Nige and also make it clear that following advice ain't simple. We all share the same challenges so none of us are different.

So I was chatting to Phil Shaw the other day about a strategic idea I was thinking about.... and at the end I nearly said the words that I shouldn't ever say (according to Nigel, and I agree).....

I said something along the lines of " I want to do this..... then stopped before I went on to say "But I can't afford it.......".

I stopped in my tracks and then turned the idea into the positive response of "what needs to happen for me to afford this...?"

This is a great question for all of us in business.... "what needs to happen for me to afford this (whatever this is)..."

Even though I had recently agreed with the words of Nigel I still nearly said those words... "but I cannot afford it".

I hope this makes sense and if you apply this to you and your business (or life in general) I think you may find yourself making some more impactful decisions.

A common example of taking this approach is relatable to a number of you.... I have had a good number of conversations around the idea of employing staff.

When talking about employing a member of staff or taking on a bookkeeper or answer your calls... the first question must be "how can I afford that" rather than "I cannot afford that..".

It is such a great question because it makes you think differently..... or at least it should.

To make this a bit clearer lets pretend that you want to take on another member of staff.... you will need to work out how much it will cost and then ask yourself what will need to happen. Now if you know your numbers you should be able to say something like if I could get another 5 jobs a week then I will be able to afford a new member of staff. Then you would say... what would need to happen to get 5 more jobs a week...? And then you would look at how many leads you are getting and how well you are converting them...? Then you say see that you need more leads, so you need more marketing or you may see that you have enough leads but you aren't converting them or even answering them. 

Trust me when I say a number of people in the network are discovering the power of asking the right questions and breaking every down properly.

Now I don't want you to read this and say that Sean says it is ok to just get what you want.... that would be madness and is actually another video I am going to shoot around financial control (thanks to Lea Ternent who put me onto a book called Profit First).

And I don't want you to struggle or wrestle with this on your own. If you want to do things (like invest in a bookkeeper or invest in the Customer Care Package😊) but feel you can't afford it then ask yourself the question "what would need to happen" OR book some of my time through Jackie and lets chat.

I hope that is useful I stop saying those 4 nasty words...