Small Business – 7 Steps to Make Your Employees As Passionate As You Are About Your Business

“Passion” is what separates you, the small-medium business owner or manager, from your staff. You are passionate about making your business successful, Your staff are not. They may be enthusiastic and conscientious. But they don’t necessarily share your passion. It doesn’t need to be that way.

1. Accept The Basic Reality.
Your staff will never be as passionate about your business as you are. It’s simple. It’s yours, not theirs. A business is like a baby. Yours is special, no matter how loving and protective you may feel about another baby. Accept this. Set out to create the “other baby” for your staff.

2. What’s In It For Them?
If staff “bust their guts” trying to make your business successful, what’s their reward? What tangible benefit do they get when their efforts contribute measurably to business success. What incentives do you offer to get them to “go the extra mile”. If your answer is that you “pay them a good wage and provide interesting work”, I can assure you that’s not enough to create passion.

3. Professional Development.
Does working in your business help staff develop themselves professionally? Is their work challenging? Do they have the opportunity to gain new skills or improve those they already have? Can they learn new and more demanding work so that they feel that they are growing professionally while working for you?

4. How Good Do They Feel?
When they leave work each day do they feel as if they’ve made a genuine contribution towards successful business results? Even if it’s been tough and demanding, do they feel that their effort’s been worthwhile? And do they feel that they’re part of a cohesive and effective team?

5. Can they Contribute?
Are your staff encouraged to make genuine contributions? Do you encourage them to make suggestions, offer opinions, try new ideas and techniques? Can they bring at least a hint of their personal touch to your business. Can they look at some successful project or initiative and say “I helped make that a success”? And, when that occurs, is their contribution publicly acknowledged?

6. Freedom.
Are you more concerned with what your staff achieve – performance- or what they do – behaviour? When they achieve the business results you want do they enjoy more personal and professional freedom? Or are they locked into rigid procedures and structures that inhibit professional freedom? Can staff be “their own boss” in some way?

7. Systems.
“A poor system will beat a good performer almost every time”. That’s “old but true”. Are you constantly improving your systems to help staff achieve business results? Are staff encouraged to improve and streamline systems to improve results? Do you already encourage a systems based approach?

Conclusion.
These are the questions you need to ask yourself if you wish to create “the other baby”. Notice that most of them are built around the very issues that make you feel passionate about your business. After all, your people are human, as you are. They’ll respond to the same stimulus as you. Create them for your staff.

Success is simple. Would you believe me if I told you so? It all has to start with yourself. Are you successful as a person? If you don’t think so, what made you think you could run a successful business?

If you’re unsure about yourself, your motivation or your ability as a small business owner, how do you think you’re going to make it through entrepreneurship and come out with victory?

How does personal success relate to your business success, whether you are entrepreneurs or small business owners? You define your success. Don’t let other people or competitors make you think otherwise.

So you just started a business, others have gotten clients within the first month. You’re well on your third month, and yet landed a single client. Does it mean you’re a failure? Not necessarily.

Unless these statements apply to you, you have not failed. Yet. You might, I won’t lie. Failure means the moment you throw in the towel. Otherwise, you have not failed. You’re just getting there more slowly than others.

So how to tell if your new business adventures are doomed to fail:

1. You’ve got a wrong reason going into this.
You quit your day job. You sit in front of the computer all day. Checking e-mails or reading interesting news for a few hours are harmless, right? Wrong. Those times add-up. Only because now you have no one to answer to, doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. You need to set a schedule and stick with it.

Work time means work time. Most of the things that you were not be able to do when you were an employee -because they’re non-work related- means things that you should not be wasting your time for, only because now you work for yourself.

2. You hate what you do.
But you do it because you’re good at it. Or because it has potential to boom and brings you a lot of money. Well…you should do it on the side. Not starting a business and means to make it as a primary source of income.

Why? Because owning your own business takes a lot. More than what it looked on the surface. And if you don’t have that passion, eventually your determination will run out. You don’t want that to happen after so many years and you’d invested so much into it.

3. You quit (or stall) when things get tough.
How do you deal with challenges and failures? Do you quit if you don’t think you can reach the goal line? When you fall, do you sit down, stare at your wound and forget that you even have a race to finish?

4. You rely on other people’s judgment all the time.
Do you always need other people’s approval before making decision? If you like something, and your best friend doesn’t think it’s good enough for you to buy, even though you’ve exhausted your research and you still want it after looking-reading-dreaming about it for so long, do you end-up not buying it? If one day everyone around you leaves, would you still be able to do this and run on your own?

5. You don’t have a game plan.
One morning you wake up and you decided to start your own business. Although it’s a great awakening moment, it’s a marvelous beginning. Not meaning you get up, quit your job, spend money on everything you’d need to start the business, and run with it. It might be okay for buying new TV (maybe) or feeling like steak so you run to Outback. But not so true with a business.

You need a game plan. It’s a wild world out there. Although there are legitimate people who would need your business, there are also a lot of people who would do whatever it takes to survive, even if it means taking advantages of aspiring entrepreneurs like you. Be smart while following your passion, not be burned..