Are You Really A Business Owner?

Lauren: You built your product, you launched your business. You saw success, money in the bank, growing team, happy client, but now you feel like you’re drowning. I’m here to help you get your head above water. I’m Lauren Goldstein. My clients call me the Business Doctor.

Together, we’ll diagnose the root cause of your business. Worries. Whether it’s your people, your process, your product will clarify your business. So you can scale without the burnout and then we will simplify it all. So your business can do what it’s designed to do, make a profit and an impact. Welcome to the Biz Doctor Podcast.

Welcome back to the. In today’s episode, I’m gonna talk about something that’s very close to my heart and honestly is probably going to trigger quite a number of you guys. So buckle up. What I wanna talk about today is whether you have a true business or you just have another job dressed up like a business.

Let me explain more about what I mean. When we started our business, chances are we did it for one of three reasons. We saw a need and knew that we could be the one to solve it. We hated the corporate politics that come with being an employee and wanted to be the boss. Or we wanted a unlimited earning potential and not to be told what to do anymore.

for me, it was a little bit of a combo of all three. I came from a long line of entrepreneurs. Honestly, the politics of working in the medical field and how they interfere with patient care had me running for the Hills. But in those first few years, I wasn’t really a business owner. Sure. I had a business, but I was a slave to it.

I don’t know if you can relate, but if I wasn’t working, the reason why I was a slave to it is because if I wasn’t working the money wasn’t coming in, so it took me. Years to really take a vacation in those first few years, maybe, maybe one vacation, because I didn’t have a true business. I had a job that allowed me to write things off my taxes, but at the end of the day, if I left it, there wasn’t anything running behind the scenes.

So what is a business? According to the most reliable fact source out there, the internet, it’s the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce. Very true. Let me tell you a little bit more about what I think of businesses. A business is a vehicle to help your clients achieve their goals while simultaneously allowing you to make an impact and a living.

It could be eCommerce service based. What have you. The common denominator is that there’s an exchange of money for good services or expertise, which I know kind of sounds just like a job, but here’s the kicker of how this is different from a. If you can step away from your business for two weeks and it runs by itself, you have a business.

If you step away for two weeks and come back to a mountain of ketchup and tiny fire triage, you have a job. Let me illustrate this by telling you the tale of two businesses and what happened to them when an unexpected death in the family happened. The two businesses are our family business and my business golden key partnership about a year and a half ago, my grandfather unexpectedly passed away and there was about a two week period where we weren’t sure exactly what was going on.

He was in the hospital, but we thought he would make a recovery. During that time. I was able to take and work from pretty much anywhere because I have a service based business. But I didn’t because, you know, we didn’t know what was happening. The moment came though when the unexpected death happened and I got on a plane immediately and flew to Colorado, it was pretty easy.

Like I said, because I have a service based business for me to hop on a plane, bring my computer and keep running my business. My father, on the other hand, when the same thing happened for him, the business stopped running because at that point, Many things have changed in the year and a half since, but at that point in the business, he was the sole runner of the business.

He was the expert, everything went through him because the mobile tax shop was the center of the business. Now for me, even though I’m the expert of the business, what happened when I got on that plane is my team continued to run the. My clients were still [00:05:00] helped. Everything kept running, but with my father’s business, everything screech to a halt customers couldn’t get their orders.

Things were not shipped. Products were not received. It created a domino effect of epic proportions and consequently had about a $40,000 revenue impact on the business. Whereas my business actually continues. At the same point and actually grew. Now I know you’re probably thinking, well, one’s got inventory and is not service based.

So you’re comparing a tomato versus a tomato, which you’re kind of right. But here’s the difference of how you can have a business versus a job, even if one is service based versus eCommerce, et cetera. And that comes down to. Really taking a moment in time and understanding if your business has leverage.

So when you have an expert in the helm and you don’t have leverage, here’s the scary truth. If something ever happened to you where you had to stop work, like this instance where my grandfather passed away and your business couldn’t keep running or producing, you would be epic. Creek revenues would be lost.

And so that my friend is what I call a concentrated risk, which is something that you wanna mitigate in your business as soon as possible. I know I covered a lot in that first little bit. So to recap, really, truly the difference between a job dressed up as a business and a business in this context is can it run without you, or do you have a concentrated risk where if you step out of it for a moment of.

it’s going to have negative impact on your customers, on your revenue and on your production. Now, the other thing that I wanna talk about is lifestyle, business versus enterprise business. It’s a really important question that I think not enough entrepreneurs really take time to think about. That’s. One of the things that we address first in our diagnostic deep dive is to get crystal clear on where you’re going and the kind of business you want.

And we touched on this actually in one of our previous episodes with Caitlin Carlson, which was so eye-opening, I recommend if you’ve not gone and listened to that one, go back and listen to it because there’s a lot of ways to get to a million dollar business and even more ways to grow into multi seven figures.

But the true north should be what kind of business and quality of life you want to have. At some point, sacrificing your health, happiness, and life to grow a business, you might end up resenting because you didn’t think about what you really wanted and were just growing for the sake of growing. We’ll come back to bite you in the butt.

Take a moment and ask yourself, do you wanna lean team? Do you wanna big team? Do you wanna be the sole service provider expert? Do you wanna have joint service providers or other teams? Or people on your team that are certified in what you do. Heck you could even create, you know, little, little franchises of people who are certified in your unique expertise, but again, it comes back to leverage.

There’s a lot of ways to build a successful business, but you gotta understand in your world what you want that business to look like because being a slave to your business and working for your business. Is very different than having your business work for you. We have too many stressed out depressed grind till you die.

Gary V types in this world we don’t need anymore. So ask yourself, how is your business serving your life goals? And if it doesn’t feel good, realign. Now hear me. When I say that there will be seasons of stress and grind. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the majority of time in your business, outside of those stressful seasons.

What do you want that to be? And two, that the last part about this is getting out of a quote unquote job business into a real life business is getting out of run and into own. And again, that comes back to I’ve said it numerous times, leverage and leader. There’s a famous quote. I’m sure you’ve heard. If you wanna go fast, go alone.

If you wanna go far go together. So there’s few ways to create leverage. Well, there’s many ways to create leverage, but the few ways that I think are the most effective are through systems, AKA ops and through a team. You’re gonna hear me hammer home, time and time again, the value of having a team, we were not made to do all the heavy lifting ourselves.

We were also not made to be chief everything officers. When you’re starting out short, there’s a fair amount of wearing many hats and juggling, but that’s only until you have a proven product or service and flow. And then I believe your main goal should be getting out of the trenches as soon as possible.

When you’re able to get out the day to day minutia of the business, then you go from having a living, breathing toddler of a time, suck to a mature business that doesn’t have to be baby. Of course I’m oversimplifying here a bit, but the point I wanna make is that until your business can run without you or Ugh, take a week or two vacation without worrying that you’re going to come back to a burn down rubble, you just have a job with a more complicated day to day and tax structure.

I know that might have been a triggering episode for some or a harsh reality for. But the thing I’m so passionate about is your business should work for you. You shouldn’t be a slave to your business. Again, there are seasons of busy, but if you find yourself day in, day out, feeling like you can’t get out from under your business or the line between your business and your personal life is so blurred that you hardly ever stop working.

It’s time to get real with yourself and ask yourself, do I really just have a job that’s taking up 24 7. Or am I building a business? And as always, if you need help answering those questions or an unbiased third party, I’m here to talk because trust me having a job that disguises the business is way more stressful than having a business that works for you.

That’s it for this week’s episode, I’d love to hear from you and your biggest takeaways. So make sure you’re following along. Tag me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn, or wherever you hang out on the. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to the Biz Doctor Podcast. You’re probably wondering what your next steps are. Hmm. So here are some options for you.

No matter what, head to the show notes or to my website goldenkeypartnership.com. That’s real fine. Two awesome business resources to help you unlock your team and your business. Plus more information about stepping into the C-suite with me and my team. The C-suite is the only container of its kind for entrepreneurs.

It was created to give you the tools to bridge the gap that most entrepreneurs have learning how to be an effective business leader. And also providing the mental health support that is necessary to build a world class business.

After that our Diagnostic Deep Dive might just be what the doctor ordered this deep dive will help us identify what is really holding you and your business back from more profitability impact and sustainable growth. All of that info is on our website at goldenkeypartnership.com.

I’d also love to connect with you on LinkedIn.

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