For such a glamorous sounding word, entrepreneurship is not easy. Long hours, high levels of resilience and strong belief are all required to survive....not even thrive! So why do it? Why break free from a more secure corporate life?
Because a business can get in the way of doing business.
And therein lies the irony; people want to create a business and when they do, they find it is not the ideal structure to deliver a great experience.
So what to do?
How do you create a business that has the strength of process to achieve repeatable levels of outstanding service...whilst retaining the flexibility that a small business offers?
In a sentence - Think big. Act small.
Think big to allow a repeatable process. Act small in not allowing the process to overpower the people.
Growing a business means developing processes to cope. However the aim must remain on what the process delivers to the customer. Processes are not there to help YOU, they are there to help deliver those repeatable promises on a daily basis to the market.
Big business fall into thinking about how the process works, how it can protect against mistakes.
Small business what needs to happen in the process to make the customer happy.
Yes, that is a generalisation as there are many small businesses who may say "The computer say's no" and big companies who ignore the computer... deliver it, then fix the problem without the customer knowing....However it is usually easier for a small company than a large conglomorate.
So to succeed as an entrepreneur you have to solve this dilemma
How can you deliver a flexible, repeatable process that puts the customer at the heart of its delivery?
That needs you to think about how to maintain the personal aspect as you grow. It needs you to think about solving problems without adding to the process. It needs you to be constantly vigilant on how process is being used to cover a lack of understanding, training or motivation. It needs you to allow control to pass to others rather than a form.
They are hard tasks when it is your business. However remember the business exists because of the customers not you and without customers YOU don't have a business.
How flexible and repeatable is your business?