Goodhearted Business Owner & The Bottom Line Pt. 2
Do you pay your employees too much? If you don't value your time, you probably pay employees what you think you would want to be paid, but you're actually paying yourself less. Are your employees your friends who you want to treat well? Do you just like the feeling of being generous?
You need to review your expenses with an eye on how you can lessen them recurringly. Looking at your expenses can put you inside of a corner-- you may have, inside of your expenses, people you pay who are your friends, or you may purchase top of the line items. When you go through your business expenses you'll see the personal statements you're making to the world, such as I'm generous, I'm kind enough to be generous. But you look at your bottom line and realize your expenses are too much, so what do you give up? Do you give up your personal belief system or do you give up your time, money, or family resources?
How could you do this differently? Look honestly at the actual, hard cost involved in each product. Look at the percentage of overhead that has to go into each product every time you sell it. Look at your employees' time and your time. How much time do you put into your company? Divide the number of hours you work in a month by the number of products you sell in a month and you'll determine how much you "cost" and what percentage of that should be your pay per hour. Once you know what goes into the cost of your product you can get clearer on how much you can charge for the product.
Keep your commitment to your employees and customers by taking care of your bottom line.
If you're not doing this you'll be tired and frustrated as a leader and you'll avoid being proud of your work. Is there an employee who is pulling on you for more hours? Does it look like you're playing favorites? The fix is being able to have a conversation with your vendors. This keeps the conversation honest between you and your vendors and keeps you both accountable. The cost of being generous may be finding yourself closing your business or your family not having enough money.
Humility. One should be humble, we know that. It's not good to be showy or to rub success or possessions in other people's faces. Humility helps us as a society to work together because the other side of being humble is leaders can be prosecuted.
The commitment to being humble at all costs can affect your capacity to thrive as a company and it shows up on 3 levels:
1- You don't tell the world (or yourself) what your basic skills are. The purpose of your company goes undefined and people don't know what they're paying for. If you don't lay out your skillset people won't know. What is your company good at? What are you good at? I have a client who is a trainer but specifically, he's a trainer for questers, people who want to train for quests like mountain climbing, triathlons, etc. If he didn't make it known what his specific skillset or business was people wouldn't be able to find him. Clarify your skillset and make it known.
2-You're not willing to look like an expert in your field when you are. If you're an expert and you don't tell anyone or you think experts aren't humble then you will avoid sharing what's good about you and you'll avoid growing and maturing for yourself, your company, and your industry. You avoid helping people there's a better way. You've spent years of hard knocks and you know what it takes-- that makes you an expert.
3- You're unwilling to be a leader. If you avoid the heat of being seen as an expert and you avoid the heat of performing at the level you promised, you avoid being a leader. It looks to others that you don't have the strength needed to do your job or helping them do theirs. You don't let people really count on you, you step away from being a leader. It could be that you see yourself as being skilled in that area. If you don't lead, you risk people getting hurt when you could have helped them. You have people who lack clarity when you could have offered it. Leaders offer novices shelter and strength. You don't need to be nasty to be a leader; you can be kind and generous. You can help clarify and give to people-- if you're a leader people will criticize you. Are you willing to find the strength within yourself to be able to handle being criticized? Can you be humble when you're wrong and not give up being a leader during the times when you're right?
If you're not willing to step up and lead, to be in conversation with your employees, the whole tone of your company gets down-leveled. You will have more people who show up late, who are going to be grumpy, and who aren't proud of their work. You create the opposite effect of what you're hoping for. If you're focused on being generous and you're giving away your effort because you don't want to pay yourself what you're worth, that personal belief system creates a problem with your bottom line. You will take home less money than you should and that your employees get less than they deserve because you're not watching the bottom line and ensuring their job security for them. Embedded in the belief system comes the bias or judgment against protecting the bottom line. If you don't protect the bottom line the business will close. If you don't pay yourself you will feel undervalued and unappreciated by your business.
If you hide your strength and knowledge by being unwilling to be a leader and be unfindable people can't find or use you for the thing you've come here to be.