3 hats every business owner should wear

Doing what we do we get to know a lot of Perth based business owners. So along that journey we managed to pick up a whole bunch of insights on what businesses lack, in order to be successful. And funnily enough it’s often totally unrelated to the lack of videos on their website:)
What we often feel, observe and bump into, are business challenges caused by attitude. As a business owner, it’s essential to face and handle these “right brain” challenges and to make firm decisions to move forward.

Apart from working with hundreds of organisations we also experienced a lot of these processes first hand (setting up our own business as new migrants from Belgium).

Facing challenges and moving forward is what a French-born medical doctor in New York did. When he learnt that his hip New York based practice wasn’t really making a profit (much to his own surprise), he decided to turn the ship around. He became more than a physician. This is what he did and what I would recommend you to do if you feel your “ship” is floating around in circles in the middle of the ocean:

1. Become a System Analyst
As a business owner it’s important that you understand your own systems. If until now you never got around to setting up proper systems (and that’s what happened to our NY doctor), then you would benefit from taking time out to put them in place or to inspect them in detail. The New York doctor figured out he was loosing tens of thousands of dollars because of his own malfunctioning systems.

2. Become a Customer Service Expert
The NY physician figured out another nugget of wisdom. The best receptionists, he found, were people who performed well as a waiter in hospitality. This radically changed his view on recruitment for non-medical staff members. People who were able to keep a real smile when working with customers and multitasking, turned out better choices than qualified medical secretaries who would just tick the boxes. Wouldn’t you agree it makes sense? Don’t we all love to be welcomed with a real smile when we go and see a doctor?

3. Become an HR specialist
If it’s not hanging over your desk yet, print it and buy a frame today: “Hire on attitude, then teach skills”. I was talking to a customer the other day who wanted our advice on sacking her team. Although she acknowledged she was working with the most skilled people in town she also felt let down by them. They don’t follow the systems that have been set up and they refuse to work as a team, let alone add value to the systems, create better systems or go the extra mile to support her as a leader. “This basically means you don’t have a team,” I told my customer. And I meant it.

You can read the full story here: How This Entrepreneur Paid Off $400,000 Without Closing His Business.

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Els Van de Veire

Creative Director at MultiMediaMakers

Director/Owner, Creative Director, MultiMedia Designer, Journalist and Producer, Els builds on 20 years in broadcast and online media to make the most of every pixel and every second of compelling content.