We hear this all the time. In order to succeed you need to be “working ON your business… instead of IN your business!”
For many real estate investors working IN a business is all that they know.
You may recall from my previous series titled It’s Lonely At The Top…that almost everyone of us left a JOB to start our real estate career… and unless you were fortunate enough to be at the top in that old job environment you most likely were working IN someone else’s business.
So.. what is meant by working on your business vs. working in it?
I will explore the answer to that question in the next series of articles…
I am an avid reader. I usually get through 2 -3 books a month looking for nuggets that I can internalize to improve myself, my business or the businesses of my clients.
One of my favorite authors is Michael Gerber. If you don’t know who Michael Gerber is… just go to Amazon and do a search.
Mr. Gerber is the visionary behind what he calls The E-Myth. The letter ”E” refers to Entrepreneurial. To understand what he is really thinking you need to read the book. Some years after the first book came out, Mr. Gerber published a follow-up book whose title was The E-Myth Revisited… and that is where I will start this discussion.
The essence of The E-Myth Revisited was that every entrepreneur needed three elements to ensure that their business would thrive, grow and prosper beyond it’s initial start-up, yet often times these individuals… that would be each of you in case you were wondering… did not possess these traits and were destined to failure.
Gerber suggested that in order for business to survive it’s founder needed to possess the following traits…
Being a VISIONARY! Yes a visionary. As an entrepreneur, you must have a clear vision for what you want your business to accomplish. What contribution(s) you want it make to you, your family, society. Yet many, many real estate investors have no idea what the vision for their business is. For most, their primary vision is to make a huge sum of money. Well, let me tell you that if that is your vision… you are doomed to failure.
Being a Manager! When you think of manager think in terms of systems and processes. Think in terms of breaking into a cold sweat when one step of your purchase routine is neglected (assuming you have one). Or, probably more to the point for many of you… repeating the same process over and over again, yet every time you do it, it is done differently and is just as hard as the first time because you don’t have a process or system to follow.
Being a Technician! Think in terms of the person who is doing the work. This is the place where most entrepreneurs start out. They leave their accounting JOB to start their own accounting shop. They stop doing construction work for others and move out on their own. For many real estate investors this is where you start because that is where the gurus tell you. Use this technique or that and you will make a killing.
The cold hard facts are that for every entrepreneur, the more of each one of those traits you possess the higher the probably you will not only get your business off the ground but it will thrive and survive.
I will continue to explore these three traits and time each into how you can start to “work on your business… instead of in your business” in part 2.
In the mean time… let’s get a vigorous discussion going on this topic.