It’s July, and thoughts in America turn to freedom.
This month, on #ThinkAboutItThursdays, we’ll explore four areas where you, the savvy business owner, can achieve more in business and create more personal freedom along the way.
Co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman says, “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.”
“Team” is a fundamental must for entrepreneurs who are serious about sustaining and scaling a successful business. Without a support team around you, owning a business offers a kind of freedom…as long as you crave longer hours, lower wages, more taxes, increased liability and no vacation benefits.
Do you desire to own and operate a company that supports your lifestyle without consuming every ounce of personal time and energy?
Build a team.
Having a team in place provides a safety net or continuity plan when life takes an unexpected turn that removes a business owner from the workplace for a day, week, month or year.
Be Media Savvy co-owner Lisa Petree had this reinforced just a few weeks ago on a Tuesday morning. In addition to being a partner in BMS, Lisa is the Knoxville Chapter Leader of Women’s Prosperity Network, an international organization that serves female entrepreneurs.
Here is Lisa’s story:
A phone call at 5 am never brings good news. June 21 was no exception. My day started with a call about a family emergency, and I had to respond.
Unfortunately, June 21st was also my day to lead the Knoxville’s Women’s Prosperity Network (WPN) Monthly Mastermind.
What now?
It’s not possible for me to attend to the emergency and lead the mastermind. I am so grateful for team.
I did what I could for the family while I waited for a decent hour to start contacting my leadership team in WPN. My first call was to a great friend who has lots of presentation experience. She immediately agreed to do the presentation part of the mastermind. All I had to do was send her the PowerPoint and some talking points I wanted covered. She would take care of that part of the event.
My next call was to another great friend who handles registration. She agreed to run by my house and pick up all the equipment and paperwork that was needed for the event. That part taken care of.
The last call was to my facilitator. She immediately agreed to handle announcements, new members and all the other little things that go into a successful mastermind event. She would also communicate with me after the event and with WPN corporate, if needed. The final pieces were taken care of.
The last call I made was to WPN Corporate to let them know what I had going on, how the meeting would be handled, and who their main contact person would be for the day.
All it took was having a team with the individual skills needed to handle everything to be done and a bit of organization. When I agreed to lead the Knoxville Chapter of WPN, I sat down with a few trusted advisors and went thru a ‘What If” session. That paid off when one of those “what if’s” actually happened. The mastermind went off without a hitch. Our team modeled cooperation, collaboration and teamwork for the ladies in attendance.
Having a team in place allowed me to focus on my family emergency without worrying over the event.
I am so grateful to Teresa, Lisa and Raeus for being my team that day and for being outstanding examples of how business owners can work together to achieve great things!
Of course, none of this could have been executed so flawlessly if there wasn’t a documented SYSTEM in place for all to follow. For that, I have to thank WPN Corporate and the founding partners/sisters; Nancy Matthews, Trish Carr and Susan Weiner.
We’ll talk more about what kinds of systems you should have documented next week. Our guest blogger will be Judy Householder, former director of franchise operations for KFC. Judy managed restaurant quality and brand reputation for 5000 + KFC company-owned and franchised domestic operations. She knows a few things about systems.
