Have you seen the TV shows that feature a failing restaurant or bar and a celebrity chef who comes in to save the day?  This chef may transform the menu, provide a new way of operating the kitchen, makeover the seating area, or offer other helpful changes to the owner.  Ultimately, they ensure that the product, aka the restaurant’s ambience and menu offerings, is good if not even great.  Then, they allow the owner to take the reins back and operate their new and improved restaurant.

 

Recently, I was watching one of these shows that focuses on bars. On this episode, they revisited a few bars that had been “fixed” by the pros one or two years ago.  I expected to see these establishments thriving.  Instead, they were still failing!  How could this happen if they had a guaranteed good product?

 

The answer is simple.  The people owning and operating the restaurant were the same.  They had the same mindsets, processes, and expectations.  Unfortunately, a good product will still fail if it isn’t provided by a strong business.

 

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What You Can Learn From Restaurants With Good Products That Failed

 

The same is true for you!  If you have a great product or idea, you have to have a great business model as well.  Otherwise, you’re crippling the success of your product.  Even worse, the people who need the solutions you’re providing won’t find your product or service.  Bottom line, your good product will fail.

 

As an owner, you need to continually work on yourself.  Seek to educate yourself on leadership skills and best practices in your industry.  You should also keep an eye on the numbers in your business.  Is it performing the way you expected?  If not, what may be causing the problems?

 

It’s impossible to grow if you aren’t assessing both your strengths and weaknesses.  We are pleased to offer a comprehensive assessment tool for the 8 key drivers of growth in your business.  It’s a great place to start!  It will help you identify what aspects of your business may be contributing to failures rather than successes.  Of course, many of the businesses we work with are doing quite a few things right, but this assessment helps them pinpoint key areas of growth to scale to six or seven figures.

 

Once you’ve identified the weaknesses, you should seek out resources that will help you grow.  The primary reason good products fail is because the business owner becomes stagnant as a leader.

 

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If you’re looking for a place to start, here are a few of my favorite leadership resources:

My top podcast recommendations for leaders:

Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast

This podcast offers personal, practical coaching lessons that take the mystery out of leadership. Craig brings you empowering insights and easy-to-understand takeaways you can use to lead yourself and lead your team. You’ll learn effective ways to grow as a leader, optimize your time, develop your team, and structure your organization. Looking for an episode to start you off?  “Listen to 3 Secrets To Lead Yourself.” Craig shares how you are likely the most difficult person you’ll ever lead. In that episode, Craig shares two “whats” and a “who” that will help you completely rethink what you consume (and inevitably become) as a leader. You can also watch the video and download the leader guide: https://www.life.church/leadershippodcast/3-secrets-to-lead-yourself 

 

club capital leadership podcast with bradley hamner artworkThe Club Capital Leadership Podcast

I host this podcast each week to teach owners how to grow their business, grow their leadership and grow and develop their team.  On the most recent episode (at the time of this post), Mike Michalowicz shares “Why Different Is Better.”  He discusses the frameworks that helped him build multiple seven figure businesses.  He also shares his “no-bullsh*t” method to differentiate your business and stand out in the marketplace.  You can find his latest book, “Get Different,” as well as “Profit First” and “Fix This Next” on his website https://mikemichalowicz.com

 

Coaching For Leaders  

Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. Dr. Dave Stachowiak brings perspective from a thriving, global leadership academy, plus more than 15 years of leadership at Dale Carnegie. This Monday show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Learn more about this podcast and get additional resources at www.CoachingforLeaders.com.

 

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My top book recommendations for leaders:

 

The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

Olson shares a way of thinking, a way of processing information that enables you to make the daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire. Learn why some people make dream after dream come true, while others just continue dreaming and spend their lives building dreams for someone else. It’s not just another self-help motivation tool of methods you must learn in order to travel the path to success. It shows you how to create powerful results from the simple daily activities of your life, by using tools that are already within you.

 

War Of Art by Steven Pressfield

Pressfield shares… “Friends used to come to me all the time and say, “I know I’ve got a book in me.”  So I would try to help them. We’d sit up till two in the morning with me explaining the concept of Resistance and psyching my friends up to overcome their self-doubt, their vanity, their fear, their self-sabotage. I did this on about ten different occasions.  Of course nobody ever wrote their book.  I take that back. One person did, and it was a really good book that, alas, never found a publisher. But back to those two-in-the-morning psych-fests. Finally I got tired of them. I said to myself, Steve, why don’t you just write this stuff out in book form. Then when somebody tells you that they know they can be a writer and they want your advice, you can just hand them the book and say, ‘Here, read this.’  This is that book.”

 

stack of business related books

 

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Start With Why shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

 

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, he reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity.  He shares how those principles give us the security to adapt to change. Covey also seeks to offer the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

 

group of people at table with notebooks

 

Find a community.

 

Another great way to grow as a leader is to join a community of peers with similar goals.  Our Facebook group of business owners and entrepreneurs offers this!  We’d love to see you over in Business Growth Curators.  Whether you’re new, or you’ve been in the community for a while, I invite you to share some of your favorite leadership resources with the group this week!

 

Thinking Time

The bottom line here is that your good idea or product doesn’t need to fail.  It can succeed with support from a strong business model and your leadership.  This week, ask yourself: What skills do I need to master to attain the success I want?

 

Lead well,

Bradley

@bradley_hamner

 

PS. Check out these related blogs from our team!

Simplify To Multiply

Everyone has heard this before.  Some coaches have built their whole business around it.  Do a quick google search and you’ll get thousands of hits.  However, no one gives an example of what it really means in practical terms.  Today, I want to show you one way we simplified our business recently.  Read more…

 

 

Why Bootstrapping Can Limit Your Growth

Three skills are essential to survival as a start-up that you must eventually “unlearn” to grow a valuable business.  While these talents are prerequisites for getting a business off  the ground, they become a liability as time goes on.  Read more…

 

 

 

Run Your Private Company Like It’s Public

Small businesses often operate as if their sole purpose is to fund the owner’s lifestyle, but this could be lowering the overall value of your business.  Here’s why:  The most valuable companies are run with financial rigor.  If your only goal is to fund your lifestyle, there is a good chance that you aren’t focused on building a valuable business through good record-keeping.   Read more…