Build a machine
The best and most important advice I can give anyone in business or thinking about going into business is this – Put all your effort into building your business into a machine and build this based on a healthy obsession with the machine from the ground up. That doesn’t mean do it all yourself; that does not mean micro-mange; let people perform, but to the rhythmic beat that you set for your machine. Recognise that success is a team sport and never stop learning!
Of those brave souls who take the plunge into designing, planning and then building their own business, it is a rare breed that comes out the other end with the success they desire. The question has to be, why are there so few that make it? Let me re-frame that by pointing out that if you look at the most successful businesses, the ones that are built to last and produce great results year on year, for as long as the leadership obsess, you’ll find leadership teams who build their businesses into well-oiled machines, where they obsess about every aspect of the machine. These are the ones who experience the greatest success and the most enduring results.
If you spend a little time researching this, as I have for my book The 7C’s of Why, you will come to the same conclusion. As you drill down into the detail, you will find committed and obsessive people at the helm. If you want success, the key is how much you want it deep down in your core! When it comes to developing your own business, this is a big clue into what you need to be and should be doing—obsessing about your machine and doing all you can to improve every aspect of it.
In this regard, talk is cheap. I come across so many good people who talk about wanting a successful innovative, attractive business. Still, far too few of them do anything meaningful about it because they don’t want it enough, or they think they know more than they do, or they are unwilling to learn, and the list goes on.
Despite the lengthy list, the more you ask the question ‘why’, the more you drill down you will end up making the same conclusion as I. When it comes right down to it, there is simply not enough obsession, not enough attention paid to building the machine and far too much status protecting, ego stroking and preoccupation with the expertise over the construction of the machine!
In the businesses that I have owned and grown and for those that I grew on behalf of the owners, there was always one irrefutable constant, and that was my obsession with the business and its success, the attention paid to the building of the machine and the effort made to surround myself with the right people, which invariably means kissing your share of frogs!
Today all those important aspects have been made easier with the establishment of the Rainmakers Club and the delivery mechanism we call the Rainmakers Hub. But this is not the silver bullet; it still takes effort; you need to find some obsession and build the machine. Remember, you are never alone with the Rainmakers Community, providing you make the effort to use us. Success is a team sport.