Invest 5 Hours
Dear Business Owner:
Research suggests that the typical owner of a small or midsize business works about 60 hours a week. Far too many of them are working for or in their business that they never find time to work on their business.
John Foster Dulles stated that “The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
Are you dealing with the same business problems you had a year ago?
Typical problems include poor cash flow, employee issues, lack of information, unhelpful vendors and suppliers, difficult clients, no ongoing marketing effort, fear of being sued, trying to do too much, no business plan and fighting fires all day long, every day and many more.
Time constraints and the demands of day to day business make it almost impossible to hang a CLOSED sign on your door for any substantial length of time. To further complicate matters, the need for downtime, recreation and family time probably means most of your weekends are already spoken for.
If you are serious about improving the condition of your business, please answer these 12 questions:
- Is it lonely at the top running your own business?
- Are you getting low productivity from people you expected more from?
- Is there a gap between your goals and what your company has achieved in the last 12 months?
- Could you benefit from regular accountability?
- Do you want to increase your sales in the next 12 months?
- Do you think you would benefit from a business plan?
- Could communications within your company be better?
- How would you feel if you could decrease your costs and expenses?
- Would improving your business cash flow make you feel better?
- Do you have clients that need to be replaced?
- Do you think you would benefit from the advice of other business owners?
- Would you being willing take time – 1/2 day per month – to be surrounded by top executives sharing successful insights on business management?
You are not alone!
An Executive Forum is where you go to get answers to these questions, and hundreds of others you have about running your business. Your fellow Forum Members, who are presidents, CEOs and owners like yourself, can tell you what you need to hear – not what you want to hear.
These men and women are your peers. They’ve been there and done that. They have to make every payroll, too. They know what it means to have a vision, and then the tenacity and grit to bring it to life. These colleagues will be rooting for you to be successful. And they’ll regularly ask for your advice as well. Take advantage of what Napoleon Hill* called “The Power of the Master Mind.”
What I am asking you to do is INVEST 5 HOURS a month to make your business better. If you take that 60 (or more) hours a week you are working, multiply it by 52 weeks and divide it by 12 months, you are working in the neighborhood of 260 hours a month. I am asking you INVEST 5 HOURS a month (a mere 1.9% of the total 260 hours) to improve your business.
I invite you to be my guest at an Executive Forum meeting at no cost to you.
Call me at 661.295.6892 … or send an email to KenKeller@sbcglobal.net. Based on the size and type of of your business, you can be a guest at an appropriate Forum meeting.
Respectfully,
Ken Keller
President
Renaissance EXECUTIVE FORUMS
P.S. Enjoy these articles, revisit often as I write and post a new one every week and leave me a comment! Thanks!
*Author, “Think & Grow Rich