If you own a business, you’ve most likely experienced the “magic of business”. It may not feel like magic at times. In fact, you may think it’s a struggle most of the time. Struggle comes from your human nature to force your business into a mold it was never meant to occupy. In this post, I will describe the four wins that appear out of nothing in a successful business. I will then illustrate the source of this magic act, along with the challenges that you may experience on the way to performing your magic. You can learn to replace your "force" with your "magic".
The Win/Win/Win/Win of Business?
Here are the Win/Win/Win/Win’s of a successful business.
Customers
The first win is your customer. Your customer gets products and services that would not exist unless you created them with your business. You may think your customer would get those products and services from one of your competitors. Right? Wrong. There is something truly unique about you and your company that isn’t available anywhere else.
Employees
The second win is your employees. If you’ve ever been laid off from a job, you understand how important your work is to you. The money you earn as an employee is helpful in creating a life that you want. An even greater win for you, as an employee, is being part of something greater than yourself.
Business Owner
As the business owner, you win by making a great living for you and your family with the profits from your business. In fact, business owners will earn substantially more than they could ever earn working for another company. More importantly, you will lead a group of people to accomplish something that is greater than what you could do on your own.
Investors
If you were to invest your money in a savings account today, you’d earn a whopping 0.1% per year interest. However, if you’d invested your money in a S&P500 index fund, you’d have made an average of 11.2% per year. Investors are willing to risk their fortune to make more wealth than those who take the “safe” path.
Where’s the Magic?
The existence of the four wins that I just described never existed until your business created them. That’s right! These four wins are created out of nothing through the existence of your business. That’s magic to me. Yes, there’s a lot of hard work and investment capital involved. By themselves these items have no meaning… until you create magic with your business.
If you don’t believe me, look at the stock market. If you bought Microsoft stock five years ago, you’d have paid $60 per share. Today’s stock price for Microsoft is near $300 per share. Where did this value come from? Who created it? Why does someone think this company is worth 5X more than what it was five years ago? This value would never exist unless Microsoft existed. The employees who work for Microsoft would be looking for work elsewhere. The products and services created by Microsoft would not be giving amazing benefits to the customers who have become much more productive because of products like MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint.
Where’s Your Business Magic?
It’s too easy to point out business success with a giant like Microsoft. However, it may not be as easy to see the magic in your small business. In fact, your business may seem like a constant, painful struggle… not magic. Why?
We are all human. As business owners, we are a special type of human. Human beings want to control things. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is part of your magic as a business leader. Unfortunately, it is this “control” that tends to battle your business magic.
As a worker, we have sought out jobs hoping that we will earn enough money to make a living for ourselves and our families. We may even pay for higher education to get an advantage in this regard. We want to do something that we like and that makes us more money. At some point, we learn that the more we work, or the more we learn, the more money we can make. We tend to take this formula with us as a business owner.
Work + Knowledge = Success
If you want the magic of business to happen in your business, you must shift your mindset. You must rise above your day-to-day work output and understand how multiple pieces must work together to create the magic of business.
What? – What will be the product or service that your customers need?
Who? – Specifically, who wants your product? What problem does it solve for them? What specific benefits will they gain if they use your products?
Money? – What will it cost you to make? What will you need to earn? How much will you pay your employees? What investment will you need? How will profit be reinvested or distributed?
For you to create magic, you must create four wins with your business.
The first step to start your magic is to create or recreate a business plan.
Start with your customer and product/service. What does your customer want that you can provide?
What will it cost you to create the solution in the previous question?
As you grow, who will you hire and how much will you pay them?
What price will you ultimately need to charge to fund the growth of your business?
Is this price reasonable in your marketplace? Yes = MAGIC; No = Try again.
The second step is to implement your plan to find areas of improvement.
The third step is to scale your working business model.
Finally, measure your MAGIC…
M – Money: Are you creating benefit for your customer, wealth for your business and its stake holders?
A – Abundance: Is the wealth that you are creating forming a spirit of abundance in you, your employees and your investors?
G – God’s Gift to the World: Is your business God’s gift to the world? Are you making the world a better place?
I – Indispensable: Will your clients, employees, and you believe that there’s no way you’d want to go back to life without your company?
C – Creating: Is your business creating or destroying? Note: If you own a demo business, you are still creating 😊
Obstacles to Your Business MAGIC
As with anything worthwhile, there are natural obstacles to creating the MAGIC for your business.
Perspective: As business owners, we’re often drawn to “problem solving”. This means that we tend to focus on “problems” instead of MAGIC creation. Get outside of your business for long enough to witness your MAGIC. If you have been in business and are generating even a modest profit, you’re creating business MAGIC.
Wrong Product: The number one reason that businesses fail is that they invest a substantial amount of time and resources into a product or service that people simply don’t want or need. No matter how much you want a failed product or service to work, it won’t. It is missing a key win for your customers.
Not Profitable: Another key reason business’s fail is that they fail to earn a profit. Ken Blanchard said, “Profit is the applause you get for creating a motivating environment for your people and taking care of your customers.” The math in your business plan and execution should create excess money. This excess money is called “profit”. Profit is the key indicator of wealth creation that is the magic of business. If you don’t have it, you have a money sucking machine, and not a magical money-making machine.
Run Out of Cash: You may think that profit and cash are the same thing. They’re not! Many business plans call for a negative cash flow in their early years when they are researching, discovering, innovating, and experimenting. This negative cash flow is not necessarily a problem. The problem happens when you fail to raise the proper amount of capital from investors or bankers. This can be avoided by business planning.
Conclusion
There you have it. I’ve described the four wins in business and how these wins magically emerge out of nothing when you do your business right. I highlighted the sources of business magic along with some business pitfalls that kill the magic.
As a business coach, I rarely give magic to any of my business owner clients. However, I do highlight their magic help them view what they do from an objective perspective. This view helps them become better business leaders, better family leaders, and truly appreciate what they do; and the magic that they create.
If you’d like to learn more about how I coach my business owner clients, please visit my website at www.mmbizcoach.com .