Key Qualities of a Successful Business Owner
Frank Choy
Outsourced CFO | Mgt Consultant | Business Adviser @ Capstone Consulting | Manufacturing Process Improvement
"Seek First to Understand" Steven R Covey
Introduction
To be successful in business today, the typical business owner must wear many hats for different occasions. At the same time, you possess and display different personas and styles in order to be effective and efficient.
In this article, we look at key qualities and characteristics required for owners to survive, thrive and grow with their businesses.
It is useful to keep three things in mind as a business owner:
1/ Your world revolves around your customers. Everything you plan and do should keep this in mind.
2/ You are a normal human being and not a machine. You will have good days and not so good days. Perfection is an illusion! Your cumulative learning for later use is most important.
3/ Success is not a destination. It is a series of milestones achieved on your business journey.
1. Visionary
This is your business, so dream big and see into the future of your industry and the opportunities presenting to you. From your visions, comes your goals and completion timelines.
As time goes by your visions will change due to the world changing and yourself and your priorities changing.
You must have or develop a head for business or hire the expertise required. As much as you have visions of selling your products and services, your vision must be in the context of how successful business works.
Strategic thinking is essential as it enables you to develop viable action plans. Your plans may need external help, especially if you keep getting stuck. Seek help and counsel.
Core values underpins good business. These include ethical behaviour, customer service, learning, and more. These help your visioning, thinking and doing to be methodical and have integrity.
2. Manager
You are the chief manager. You are ambitious to achieve goals to deadlines. To get there, you need to find and build a team of people on an ongoing basis. You need to be able to build your firm's finance and capabilities in order to compete in the marketplace - to attract customers and deliver quality products and services to them.
Good managers proactively plan ahead in a systematic way and allow for system failures and disruptions, in order to achieve goals and milestones.
3. Know Yourself - EQ, IQ & more
Good business owners have high self-understanding and self-awareness. They know their strengths and limitations. To the extent that an owner has limitations, they must employ or engage people with the skillsets required by their business. Importantly, the owner must trust and empower the people around them.
Important personal qualities of an owner include:
4. People Skills - The Most Important Skill
A key requirement for business success is the ability to relate well with staff, customers, suppliers and the world at large.
This enables you to:
Knowing your management style and the personas of people around you enables continual adjustment in your interactions. Your communications will then be more effective.
5. Grit - Energy, Stamina, Resilience
Operating a business is a mixture of ongoing marathon and sprints. Sometimes you may have to work long hours for days and weeks on end to meet customer needs. You will experience failures and knockbacks.
To be able to stay on course requires a mix of courage, energy, stamina and resilience.
It helps immensely when you get plenty of rest, exercise, meditation / down time and a healthy diet.
There are many resources and training courses available on healthy living and developing and maintaining resilience and bounce back capabilities. It is also useful to have good friends and family time as an antidote to work stresses.
6. Service Focus - A Source of Competitive Advantage
You are in business to deliver value to your customers. A customer service mindset is a fundamental requirement which you and every staff member in your firm must also understand and always strive to be excellent.
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To the extent that your competitors deliver better value and service to your customers, then your business is at risk of losing customers.
Customer value and service is a combination of product and service features, pricing, ease of purchase and the whole sales experience with your staff. As an example, if your industry involves 24/7 accessibility, e.g. hospitality, healthcare, travel, etc, then you must be attuned to being available for the customer and attending to their needs.
7. Decision Making & Problem Solving
Even at the best of times, business life is unpredictable and throws forth challenges to the owner or staff. These include unhappy customers or suppliers, disgruntled staff, product and service defects, government regulations and black swan moments such as pandemics and climate events.
The chief decision maker and problem solver is the business owner. As the business grows, delegated responsibility to managers and staff will help resolve these challenges.
In severe challenges, the owner must maintain calm and lead from the front whilst supporting staff.
Hubris & Decision Errors
What worked in the past may not always work. Beware of arrogance and hubris. Decision making must factor in risk.
If you have made the wrong decision, do not over react. As long as the firm survives, deal with the consequences and learn from your decision making processes.
8. Drive - Goals & Task Completion
No one is going to chase you to go to work and actually work when you arrive. The life of a business owner can be solitary; yet you have to be a self-starter and be motivated.
A little tip - motivation kicks in when you start doing work.
Remember this - you are responsible for yourself, your family, and all your staff and their families.
A key to success is using prioritised task lists and deadlines. Make sure that you drive action to completion. As your firm grows, surround yourself with great people who can do.
9. Open Mind - Learn, Innovate, Change & Adapt (Creativity)
Every business requires continual innovation in its products, services, quality and workflows. This enables you to remain competitive in your markets. Your competitors and new entrants are always innovating and so must your firm.
The business owner with an open mind is always seeing new ideas and learning to do better. A key area is that of staff management to maintain a learning culture. This will flow on to better customer service which in turn leads to customer retention and goodwill.
If your firm is struggling, look at changing your business model, structure and processes. This should bring better results.
10. Balance
You probably have never worked so many hours in your life; that is, until you became a business owner.
A key part of ongoing business success is the ability to spend personal time with family and friends or on your own. Have a healthy diet, exercise and rest. Your personal time will keep you fresh and maintain your business mojo.
Schedule holidays twice or more each year. You will thank yourself for it.
Summary
Owning a business is an exciting part of your life.
You are your own boss. You are responsible for an organisation and the people involved - staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders and other stakeholders.
The business life is a journey of many milestones and ups and downs. You must have:
Having certain personal characteristics and learning to develop your personal strengths, skillsets and capabilities is key to your ONGOING success.
All the best in your business.
Frank Choy, Virtual CFO
23 September 2022