3 Ways Business Owners Must Lead Their Businesses

As business owners, there are at least 3 roles of leadership that you must embrace in order to grow your business. These are essential to the sustaining and scaling of any business.

A Marketing Leader

Business owners must first become a Marketing Leader. A Marketing Leader is someone who is protecting and building their brand. You do this in several ways, but particularly you must clarify and communicate your marketing message and your unique selling proposition (U.S.P.) Then you must make sure you follow through and live up to your promise.

A Marketing Leader is also someone who creates and drives a marketing calendar. You not only want to build a strong brand but you also need to identify those marketing activities that generate new business. Once identified, you need to put them on a calendar so that you are consistently engaging in the activities that feed your business new leads.

Finally, a Marketing Leader will track and measure everything. I recommend creating a dashboard for yourself on a spreadsheet where you can measure the results of your activity week to week. This will enable you to make adjustments as necessary to continually improve your lead generation. Remember, if you don’t quantify it you can’t improve it – if you don’t measure it you can’t manage it!

A Management Leader

As a Management Leader you want to always be asking yourself, “Do I have the right people on the bus?” and “Are the right people in the right seats on the bus?” Great Management Leaders are continually looking for ways to improve their team and increase their team performance. They realize that their people are their greatest asset, so as a Management Leader you will want to invest time in coaching and mentoring your team. You will also need to be willing to invest financially in the training and development of your people.

A Management Leader is not only looking out for their people, but they are also thinking “systems.” You need to view your business as one comprehensive system with many moving parts. The five major sub-systems of your business are:

  • Your Marketing System,
  • Your Sales System,
  • Your Fulfillment (or Delivery) System,
  • Your Admin/Back Office System, and
  • Your HR System.

You will want to define and document these vital systems. This will enable you to create a turn-key business that can grow, improve, and run without you!

A Financial Leader

Financial Leaders keep good, clean records, and they learn to master their weekly and/or monthly reports. You will want to regularly review your P/L Statement, your Balance Sheet, and your Cash Flow Report. You may also want to create other internal reports that will enable you to track and measure the financial performance on a granular level as well as a macro level.

The Financial Leader is also diligent to make sure their money is growing in 4 areas:

  • Income (the top line,)
  • Profit (the bottom line,)
  • Cash (the wallet line,) and
  • Equity (the goal line.)

I hope you know that you can build a highly profitable business that provides you with the money you need to create the life that you want. You can also be creating a business that grows in equity value so that one day you can sell it for a meaningful return.

Strategic business owners know that leadership doesn’t just happen. You must be intentional to grow as a leader. Are you an intentional learner? What are you doing right now to grow as a leader and as a strategic business owner? It is my privilege and joy to work with some of the greatest improvement-oriented business owners in the country. They are my heroes. They inspire me. They are leaders!

Are you ready to start a leadership development program? Which of these 3 areas are you the strongest in, and which do you need to grow in? I can help you create a plan to get started. Feel free to contact me for a strategic strategy session to get you on the fast-track to leadership growth!

Glenn Smith is a sought-after Executive Coach with over two decades of experience. Recognized for his strategic insights and leadership training, Glenn has been a guiding force for more than a hundred successful small to mid-sized businesses. Merging data-driven strategies with profound insights into human behavior, he aids business owners and executives in realizing their fullest potential. A respected thought leader, Glenn has contributed to numerous business publications and is a popular keynote speaker. Outside his professional realm, Glenn cherishes family time and outdoor activities. He is a pilot with over 30 years of flight experience. He is also a professionally trained gunsmith and a firearms instructor. His dedication to fostering leadership and driving transformative change marks him as a premier figure in executive coaching.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/houstonbusinesscoach/

3 Ways Business Owners Must Lead Their Businesses

Recent Posts

Scroll to Top