Orrin Woodward, two-time NY Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, shares his thoughts on entrepreurship, leadership and life. If a person wants to be a better entrepreneur then he should focus on becoming a better leader. Here's the blog post.
An entrepreneur must be a leader. Why? Because he or she must build and lead teams of people to accomplish the task, satisfy the customer, and do so at a price that leaves profit for the team members. In other words, ineffective leaders soon prove to be ineffective entrepreneurs because the customer isn’t satisfied nor the teams paid well. Nonetheless, many would-be entrepreneurs start business while ignoring the importance of leadership to the health of their enterprise.
Entrepreneurs should enter into markets where they feel they can satisfy the customers better than their competitors. For instance, Jack Welch, in his early days, was called “Neutron Jack” because he refused to be in a business sector where he couldn’t improve to either #1 or #2. His philosophy of business led him to get out of markets where he couldn’t be the best, and move into markets where he could be the best, thus maximizing profits for the company and ensuring employment for the workers. Incidentally, few seem to understand that only a profitable company can maintain its workers. Since profit is the life-blood of any business, when a company is losing money, it’s similar to a patient losing blood. In both instances, death results if the bleeding isn’t checked.
Accordingly, leaders are constantly studying the vital signs of their business, ensuring the business is not bleeding to death. In fact, leaders must be PDCA champions, constantly making adjustment in the areas where it can have the most impact. They don’t just change things to make change, however. Instead, they listen, study, and analyze until they determine which area of change could have the biggest impact on the bottom line. Then they do something unheard of in our modern world, namely, take massive action to drive the team and business forward.
Whenever I study a business, the first question I ask is: Who is the leader? If an effective leader is in charge, he can overcome lack of capital, lack of resources, and still beat competitors who have plenty of both. Why? Because leaders constantly are developing innovative ways to solve problems while managers focus on the same methods that worked before. I love the saying: If it isn’t broke, then break it and make it better.
When my co-founders and I started LIFE Leadership, we did so with little funds or resources, but we had a superbly talented leadership team. I knew that the leadership team would quickly build the leadership products that could compete with any leadership team anywhere. Interestingly, over the last 18 months LIFE Leadership has become a $50 million dollar conglomerate through building the highest quality personal development products in the industry.
For example, anyone serious about being an entrepreneur ought to purchase and apply the principles from the Mental Fitness Challenge personal development program. The 13 Resolutions are found in my All-Time Top 100 Leadership book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE. If applied daily, they will radically change the leadership capabilities of any hungry student. In fact, I have hundreds of emails from satisfied customers who did just that.
In summary, if the reader wants to be a successful entrepreneur, then he must be a successful leader. Building a company without building one’s leadership is a fools way to launch a company. For no company will rise higher than the leadership within the company. America needs leaders to create the LeaderShift! What part will the reader play? Here is another segment of the article on the role of entrepreneurs.
Sincerely,
Entrepreneur as exceptional leader
