Make More Mindset Tip...3

As a business owner, you should be working “on” the business, not so much “in” the business. You should be focusing on your company’s purpose, direction, strategy, structure, systems, people, goals, and accountability processes.

Your goal as owner is to design and shape a business that serves you and works independently from you -- a business that is systems-dependent and not owner-dependent. You want a business that runs nearly on autopilot and spits out cash. Instead of shuffling papers or doing the bookkeeping, spend time trying to make your company different, better, more profitable and more systems-oriented. Like a business architect, try to shape your business to satisfy your vision, dreams and needs.

To gain greater freedom, fulfillment and financial success, you must function as a leader instead of as a doer. As a leader, you need to be more strategic, long-term focused and less tactical/technical, day-to-day fixated. If you don’t focus on the entire business, no one else will. It will just drift or run aground. So how do you stop thinking and acting like an employee or technician? Here are seven steps to consider seriously:

1. First, you should change the metaphor in your head for what it means to be an owner. Regardless of your industry or size of your business, start viewing yourself as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), not an employee. Instead of seeing yourself as a role player, see yourself as the head coach or the director, conductor, facilitator, or captain.

2. To help with this mindset transformation, start referring to yourself as CEO. Put it on your business card, stationery, nameplate, etc. Using the term CEO will force you to see your company as an entity above and beyond yourself, as a separate and valuable asset that needs to be professionally managed and optimized. You are not the business and the business is not you. Spend time and energy helping to build, improve and optimize this asset. For example, focus on how to grow sales, expand your competitive advantage, and increase your value to customers.

3. Consider that as CEO, you get paid at least the equivalent of $200 an hour to professionally manage this separate entity and valuable asset – your business. Ask yourself before you touch any task, “Would a CEO do this?” Or ask, “Is this task worth me doing at a cost of $200 an hour?” Don’t spend a dollar’s worth of time on a dime decision or task. Elevate your vision, thinking and tasks. Instead of asking, “How can I do a given task”, start asking yourself “Who else can do this task?” Learn to delegate often.

4. If you truly buy into your role as a CEO, you should be willing to give up the urgent, less important, low-value tasks you routinely handle. Realize that 80% of your results come from 20% of your talents and activities. Delegate the 80% of your activities that only produce 20% of your results. Stop doing the wrong kind of work. CEOs should think, lead and delegate -- not handle trivial matters. Your job as CEO is to design/re-design and grow the business; your managers’ main job is to improve the business; and your employees’ various jobs are to operate the business. Here are a few more suggestions:
• No longer major in minor things! Don’t let yourself get distracted by irrelevant, insignificant “stuff”.
• Don’t let the urgent control your life. Put your cell phone/pager away more often. Don’t be a slave to email. Check it once a day, not all day long.
• Instead of creating to-do lists, start creating not-to-do lists for you and let go of small things. Eliminate or delegate the 80% of your activities that produce so little impact for your business. Share these not-to-do lists with your team. Put them on notice that you are getting out of the daily detail (usually their areas of responsibility) and starting to see and influence the big picture.
• Quit trying to manage details and start managing your people. Guide their focus and priorities, but let them do the work.

5. Schedule time to think and plan. You must think deeply about important, strategic matters. Make time to get away from the day-to-day distractions and focus on deep thinking, planning, and decision-making. Isolate yourself to concentrate on big-picture issues. Spend time alone digesting all the information you are bombarded with and develop the big ideas to take your business to the next level of performance. Once a month, schedule a day away from the office to think and plan. With no distractions whatsoever, put on your CEO hat and spend time reviewing and improving your chief asset – your business.

6. On a daily basis, reserve the vast bulk of the day to tackle only your top 3 priorities. Selfishly guard your time and focus. Don’t allow your employees to disrupt your CEO-oriented priorities and actions with countless got-a-minute interruptions. Allowing such conduct creates an environment whereby your time is not valued and respected. It also creates unproductive days, a reactive business mindset and employees that are overly dependent upon you for everything. Stop these got-a-minute interruptions.

7. Whatever your technical expertise, consider hiring someone else to handle such technical and tactical work so that you can escape the stranglehold. For example, if your background is selling or accounting, hire a competent sales manager or accounting manager to manage such day-to-day details. If you already have such employees on your payroll, then for goodness sakes let them do their jobs. Get out of their zone of responsibility.


-Jennifer Lyster

Make More Mindset Tip...2

Let me take you back to a time when entrepreneurial dreams were running wild through your head. A time when starting your own business meant you could be your own boss, make more money, and gain more freedom. You knew it would be hard work in the beginning, but after a few short years you envisioned warm sandy beaches and tropical drinks with nothing to do but count your money. OK, I may be exaggerating a little but by now reality has probably altered your vision.

Let me ask you a couple of revealing questions. If you had to leave your business for an extended period of time, say a couple of months, would you come back to a business that is still running smoothly and profitably? How about if you left for two weeks? If your answer was anything other than yes, then you probably haven’t created a business, you have created a glorified job for yourself! You have become a prisoner of your own success.

The good news is that you are not alone. As you know, small business owners are among the hardest working people in the world, but to obtain sustained growth you will have to adopt a strategic mindset. As a strategic business owner, your primary aim should be to develop a self-managing and systems-orientated business that still runs predictably and profitably while you are not there. This allows you to work ON your business instead of being stuck IN your business.

So, you are thinking that sounds great but where do I start? The first step is to stop acting like an employee and start thinking like a CEO. Start transitioning to a new way of thinking and behaving by reprogramming yourself and your habits. Stop micromanaging and delegate. Start reducing the amount of time you spend involved in the daily transactions of your business. That is why you have employees!

The next step is to implement systems and procedures into your business that ensure daily tasks are completed correctly. All current systems and procedures need to be evaluated based upon results and updated as needed. In addition, documentation for all procedures, policies and systems need to be created in order to have a reference for employees and new trainees. Another good practice is to cross-train your employees before the need arises, not after the panic has set in. Trust your employees. If you cannot trust your employees to complete the daily tasks and act in the best interest of the company; then maybe they shouldn’t be employees? In the long run, the more hands-off you can be, the more time you will have to work on the “big picture.”

Bottom line, you should run your business; it should not run you, your family or your life. The object is to have a systems-dependent business not an owner-dependent business. Some of these concepts are very challenging for owners and will take time to transition. However, less time spent working in your business means more time to regain that entrepreneurial spirit.


-Jennifer Lyster

Make More Mindset Tip...1

All business, regardless of size or industry, have a performance gap, so learn how to close yours.

Your business has a performance gap, the difference between where you are now and where you want to be. But don’t worry you are not alone. I believe every business – and every person – has a performance gap.

One of the biggest drivers of that gap is the failure of a business to face the hard truths and to deal with reality. This is driven by a failure of people to leave their comfort zones. For your business and life to change for the better and where personal and business growth or breakthroughs happen is outside of your comfort zone.

When a business or career stalls, the most common reason is a person’s inability to slow down, take stock and get away from the daily “chaos and complexity of your office”. To stay too busy in the trenches of your business and life will result in you missing so many opportunities for growth with many people doing this wrong type of work on a daily basis. But a business can also stall when the owner decides they have a “great” business; saying the company is “great” shows the person is getting complacent and settling into a comfort zone.

Looking at your business for flaws and problems is tough and it is easy for a business owner to put the self-evaluation and analysis aside, telling himself there are more important day-to-day issues. Gap analysis can be painful, but without doing it, you will not move the needle in your business. Doing this type of analysis can require doing something that most business owners struggle with: sitting still and thinking. That means putting aside the cell phone, email, sales orders, social marketing and other day-to-day issues. It means taking time to step away from the business to spend time thinking about other things like your family or non-business interests.

If you cannot leave your business for two weeks and return with it still at the same level of profitability and success, you are not running a business and are merely an employee. It may not be possible at the time you launch, but the business cannot grow to its full potential unless the owner can delegate and find a way to be unimportant to the daily operations. Stepping back from these daily operations should free up time for the thinking needed to run the business. It should allow a business owner to ask themselves questions about operations, strategy and growth. It should allow them to find more time finding their business’ gaps and working to close them.

There is a big difference between liking $100, wanting $100 and taking action to get $100. Business owners kid themselves, because they have a lot of good intentions but they do not follow up on those intentions with actions. The key is creating lists of actions to improve the company and then following through.

In this series, we will look at some simple, yet effective strategic solutions and benefits that include:

• Greater income and freedom to spend more time with family and friends doing the things you love;
• Strategic roadmap to achieve your professional and personal goals;
• Confidence in yourself and control of your future;
• Power to overcome personal obstacles and limiting beliefs;
• Ability to identify and seize opportunities; and
• Proper planning and preparation to sell your business for a premium, which will ultimately help you to achieve your true potential – in business and in life!


-Jennifer Lyster

Today, the Swift Current & District Chamber of Commerce joined with the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the nationwide network of chambers of commerce across Canada to recognize and promote awareness of the Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness list for 2013. An initiative undertaken by the Canadian chamber network to identify and draw attention to the Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness that are holding back Canada’s progress and to urge all levels of government to act more swiftly in increasing our country’s ability to compete in the global market.

“The issue identified as number one in the Top 10 Barriers is the shortage of skilled workers”, said Swift Current Chamber Board Chair Trevor Koot. “The issue not only very strongly impacts the Swift Current business community but also that of Saskatchewan and Canada. Our businesses have recognized this as their top concern. Our member businesses/organization like Great Plains College, two Spirit of Swift Current businesses honoured in October 2012: MicroAge Swift Current’s business software enrichment and upskills training, the Southwest Newcomer Welcome Centre and their immigration workforce development and settlement services but to name a few, and the Swift Current Chamber of Commerce is working hard toward helping resolve this issue cooperatively.”

Additionally, at a local level and as leading issues for Saskatchewan business, improved workforce productivity, public infrastructure planning commitments, streamlining and simplifying tax structures need to be addressed as we form an integral part of the strong and diverse network that gives Saskatchewan and the Canadian Chamber its credibility with federal policymakers, the media and the general public.

“We are proud to be a part of the chamber network, which is at all levels actively seeking to enhance the competitiveness of business within this country, said Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce CEO Steve McLellan. “Identifying and working to eliminate these barriers is important not only to the business community, but to the standard of living that every Saskatchewan resident enjoys, and to the future prosperity of our provincial economy.”

Further information on the Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness booklet can be found at www.chamber.ca


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The Swift Current & District Chamber of Commerce represents a combined (member and non-member) interest of over 1,000 businesses in our local community network. An Advocate, Developing and Connecting Swift Current to the Southwest, the Chamber facilitates and encourages a strong, competitive economic environment while building, engaging, sustaining and leveraging the power of an aligned and unified chamber network.

The Swift Current & District Chamber of Commerce is pleased to announce the list of Nominee Finalists in the 2011 SCBEX - Spirit of Swift Current Awards. In total, 16 nominations from outstanding businesses were received as nominee finalists within the 7 SCBEX - Spirit of Swift Current categories.

Read the full press release and announcement of Nominee Finalists Nominee Finalists Announcement