I started my journey into entrepreneurship as an independent business consultant. After leaving my corporate sales management position at Honeywell, I swore I’d never hire employees. Fast-forward four years, and I hired my first employee… then my second, and quickly grew to an office of five employees.
About then, a small business consultant came knocking on my door.
I’ll never forget his words. He said, “Jeff, you’ve got a business you’re treating like a part-time job.”
He was right. At first, I was the engineer, project manager, salesman, bookkeeper, and anything else needed. As I sold more projects and became more overwhelmed, I contracted out to other professionals. Eventually, I hired employees.
Since I had become independent five years earlier, I had a limiting belief that employees and growth meant more work and less freedom. This belief limited me from growing my business. It also ensured that I would always be “overwhelmed.”
Deciding to Grow
That day, with the business consultant, I decided to take my business seriously and create a growth plan.
It wasn’t easy. Until then, I had done all the selling and felt I was the only one who could get my message right. My first new hire on my growth path was a salesperson.
It was a disaster, but I didn’t give up. I hired additional salespeople who did great, and I continued to hire others as Ennovate Corporation continued to grow. Within a few years, I was managing 10 people and felt like Ennovate was as big as it could get without promoting some of my employees to leadership positions.
Promoting Managers
I needed help managing my growing company, but I didn’t know how to make the transition. I had two significant problems. First, I wasn’t convinced my current staff was ready to manage other people. Second, the people I wanted to promote to management positions were doing a fantastic job. If I promoted them to manager, I would lose one of my best workers and sentence them to the penalty of being an administrator. I was convinced that our productivity would drop with such a move.
Instead of promoting my own staff, I attempted to hire older and more experienced people from outside our company to take on the role of manager. Unfortunately, they didn’t understand how we did things in our company and were unable to lead teams of more experienced employees. In most cases, my employees were educating and training these new managers, not the other way around.
Successful Growth
Eventually, Ennovate Corporation grew to 30 employees. We had five teams, with five managers running each team.
The folks managing my teams were, indeed, the most talented members of each team.
Over a longer period than I’d like to admit, I learned that I could train and mentor my talented staff into the role of manager/leader without losing their talent and work effort.
I eventually sold Ennovate to Ameresco, and we merged our two regional groups of employees.
Lessons for Business Owners
After becoming a business coach, I quickly recognized the same limiting beliefs in business owners. It didn’t matter if they were restaurant owners, small manufacturers, or engineering firms—these business owners were struggling with growth.
The limiting beliefs of growth go something like this:
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Each time I grow, I’ll have to work harder
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No one cares as much about this business as me
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My people are not responsible and lack business acumen
The problem with a limiting belief is that there’s some past event that validates the belief. While you’ve had bad experiences in the past, those bad experiences are one-time events not indicative of the TRUTH.
The more painful the experience, the truer we think our fake lesson is.
If you’re a small business owner, chances are that you have achieved some level of success, and you’re hanging on for dear life, hoping that the economy doesn’t crash and you can find enough customers to stay afloat. You spend half your time wanting to leave your business and the other half trying to survive. In those moments when you experience some level of success, you think about growing, but why? You’re happy where you are.
Overcoming Growth Anxiety
Dream Bigger
The first step is to increase the size of your vision. Don’t think about your next step… think about a vision 10 years from today. What will your business look like at ten times its current size? Who will run your business so you don’t have to do all the work?
Rely on Others
Once you’ve compiled your ten-times plan in 10 years, plot out how to get there. I guarantee that to get to your vision, you’ll need to hire good people. Those people will fill and grow into the roles you’ve outlined in your dream business.
While those people fill roles in your business, they are also living, breathing contributors to the value of your business. Likewise, you’re a living, breathing contributor to their growth.
As a coach and business owner, I’ve heard and lived the horror stories of bad employees. In truth, I’ve had more great employees than bad employees. If you let them, those great employees will add so much value to your business and relieve you from the overwhelming responsibility.
Lead Growth
Now that you have a plan and understand it will take others to help you realize your dream, you must develop your people.
All people want to make progress in some area of their life. It’s your job as a leader to align their desire for growth with your desire to grow your company.
If your business is not growing, your employees will become passive in their dead-end jobs.
If you create a growth vision and your employees see how they can advance in your business, they will bring energy to your business that will cause growth.
Leadership Training
I was fortunate to get fantastic leadership training working for Honeywell before I started my small business. Most small business owners and employees of small business owners aren’t this lucky.
If you find yourself in charge of people and have never had formal leadership or management training, you should enroll in leadership training that gives you the tools to lead people.
Leadership Matters
Leadership skills are mentioned so often when coaching small business owners that I created a training program called Leadership Matters that directly teaches leadership principles to existing and new managers.
Remember…
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dream big,
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rely on others,
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lead growth, and
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invest in your people with formal leadership training.
Training leaders in your company and overcoming your limiting beliefs is your ticket to realizing the business of your dreams and reducing the time and effort you spend working in your business.
