In the past, in my career plans and aspirations, the objective was to learn a lot about a little, otherwise known as specialisation. The benefits of this seem obvious in that if you achieve a degree of expertise, you can sell it as it will be scarce and valuable. In other words, you will have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or differentiator from competitors.
On I went then, on my merry way, gaining additional qualifications, professional titles, experience and general C.V enhancements designed to set me apart in an attempt to gain an advantage.
The problem I then encountered was that it actually worked and my business grew and then grew some more.
As with so many small business owners, I had to choose what to do next: stick or twist, stay or grow.
As so many people in my situation do, I decided to try to grow, but there comes the problem. The skills I had worked so hard to gain and develop to get me “here” were never going to be enough to “take us there”, and the real consideration is “us”.
To grow your business in most sectors, but especially something like dentistry, you need people and the skills to achieve that, which are way beyond just being good at a little bit of dentistry.
Here is a non-exclusive list of some of the skills you may wish to consider developing if you want to grow your small business.
1. The ability to set and communicate a vision to ALL your stakeholders (Customers, team, suppliers, advisers, neighbours, colleagues, rivals, and family).
2. Deep understanding of financial management and reporting with insight (Including but not exclusively P&L, balance sheets, management accounting, KPI’s levers, tax, cost of sale, overheads, fixed vs variable costs, reward systems, payroll, checks and balances).
3. Everything about marketing for small business (Including and especially Return on Investment - ROI)
4. Sales techniques and styles/philosophy, including how you want to sell and how you want your people to sell.
5. Human Resources/Human Asset Management/Team Building - All of this is both legal and philosophical (Transactional and transformational), as well as organisational structure, policy, recruitment, performance management, and general well-being and also how this interacts with financial management and especially wages and rewards.
6. Leadership - Who you are, how you want to lead your larger business and to which “North Star”, which example do you want to set, and how will you do that? Are you prepared to “Know yourself to lead yourself to lead others”.
7. Strategy - A good understanding of the process of building the plan for this (and executing it). The ability to understand and follow through with strategic planning to lead your business through the challenges to a better place.
Together with these suggestions, small business leaders must strive to develop skills in self-awareness, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, risk management and conflict resolution, to name a few.
In other words, the passage from Specialist (technician in the language of Michael Gerber) to Leader (Entrepreneur) means the journey from knowing a lot about a little to a little about a lot and acceptance of that.
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