Four focus points of great entrepreneurs

Learn the four main focus point of high-level entrepreneurs when it comes to approaching and developing businesses.

As business owners it is incredibly easy for us to get bogged down in the day-to-day of running a business. However this short-term view leaves us firefighting and running a business, instead of actually growing a business.

High-level entrepreneurs have four main focus points when it comes to approaching and developing businesses. When followed, these four focus points will pull you out of day-to-day and enable you to start building a truly great business.

The four focus points of great entrepreneurs

Vision

It is your primary job as the business owner to set the vision and direction of the business. Many business owners shy away from this, pointing to the excuse that ‘I’d just be guessing, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future’.

In my experience, the bigger the vision you have for the business, the harder people will work for you, be it staff, partners, investors or board members. Set a one-year, two-year and five-year vision for your business.

Make it compelling. Make it bold. Then make sure you talk about it every day.

Set a one year, two year and five year vision for your business. Make it compelling. Make it bold. Then make sure you talk about it every day.

Sales Targets

Your vision may include both financial goals and non-financial goals. However, once the financial goal has been set, break that goal down into how many sales need to be made for that year – include each quarter, month, week and day.

This ensures that you, as the business owner – your staff and anyone else involved in the business – know exactly what needs to be achieved on a daily basis in order to attain your yearly goals.

Operations

Once you’ve got the sales targets in place, consider what the organisation needs to look like in order to make these sales and deliver.

Here you want to examine three things:

Your organisational chart – How is the organisation setup? Do you need to bring on extra business development, operations or admin staff in order to hit and deliver on your sales targets?
Position descriptions – Everyone in the organisation needs a very clear and detailed position description that communicates to them, and everyone else in the organisation, their role in the team.
Systems – What systems need to be in place in order to make the volume of your sales targets and deliver on them?

Finance

Once you have set the vision, determined the sales required to achieve it, and worked out what staff base you need – all of this information needs to go into a 12-month budget. Most early-stage businesses don’t need a full-time CFO, therefore you can engage one on a casual basis for an hourly rate.

This 12-month forecast will include all projected revenues, the cost of goods and the expenses of running the business – including any additions to the staff base – and will provide you with a financial scoreboard to accompany any business decision going forward.

The budgeted numbers also need to be consistent with the financial goals you’ve outlined in your vision.

If you, as the captain of your ship, can get clear on all of the above, not only does it make you a more effective entrepreneur, it will make you an incredibly efficient leader to anyone who comes into contact with your business.

Big vision, small steps.