The Octopus Effect – You Don't Have 6 Arms!
There are many aspects of running a business that an owner has to consider and not all of them are within the skillsets included within the organisation, particularly smaller business entities. In theory business owners have to be solicitors, accountants, bankers, designers, distributors, project managers, mentors, customer services… the list is endless! In practice, this is simply not possible due to both time and knowledge constraints and business owners need to consider what this means for the way that they operate.
If you are a new business owner, you need to pragmatically consider what you can realistically bring to the party and where you will need help to make sure that you get off the ground and more importantly, are successful.
Eoin and I bring different strengths to our business, but we still lack some of the fundamentals to ensure that we can run our business successfully. We did a SWOT analysis of our abilities and identified the areas where we were going to need help from the off-set. We were probably a little harsh on ourselves, but that is no bad thing. The areas that we identified as requiring immediate attention were;
- Accountancy: while we both have the rudimentaries, we are under no illusion as to our overall competence in this area being anything but ordinary. We found ourselves a solid local accountant who takes an annual retainer to do our monthly returns, payroll, end of year books etc. Oh, and he can make sure we’re claiming everything against tax that we can – nice!
- Technical Design: we both knew what we wanted out of MyProjectTracker, but had not got one clue as to how to design and implement a hosted web app. We went out to market through a mini-tendering process and chose the team at Contrast and they are doing a great job for us.
- Sales and Marketing: our weakest area probably. We did lots of reading and research to help us with the e-marketing piece and then found a good local person for direct marketing help into the Irish market.
As we have developed, we have taken advice and counsel from many different parties and there is no doubt that this help along with getting our area experts has helped our business develop.
One small word of caution, it costs nothing for experts and mentors to give advice in the vein of “you should do this”. You don’t have to do anything they suggest. It is advice and guidance, not a dictation of strategy they are giving to you.
It is your decision at the end of the day and you need to be true, but honest, to yourself. Where are the areas you need help?
Tags: business management, efficiency, Entrepeneur, Small Business
