Technical Expertise Vs Business Expertise | Edmonton Business Coach

I fixed her joining us for another edition of ask the Speral CPA. Today we’re talking about technical expertise versus business expertise. So, uh, I have Laura here again with me today. Laura, thanks for joining us. So, so Laura, is your, is your little one learning anything more business yet? Not yet, too, too young. So they’re not, not, not my mind starting to sell me stuff. I don’t know if that’s, I think that’s maybe my fault. So, um, so the quote that we have here today, Michael Gerber Crow is the fatal assumption is if you understand the technical work of the business, that you understand the business that does that technical work. And that’s the fatal assumption and all the statistics, you know, Industry Canada tells us that 50% of Canadian small businesses fail. And those are probably the most optimistic stats that you can find on that subject.

Some people will suggest that it’s up to 90% that fail. And what happens is a lot of business owners, they get into business because they’re better than average at a particular technical skill. There are really good dentists, they’re really good doctor. They’re really good plumber. They’re really good general contractor or carpenter. And they think that those skills will guarantee them a successful business. They think that those technical skills in that trade, that location, that, that a professional skills is going to guarantee a successful business. So Lauren, what are the questions that you think that these business owners need to be asking? Do skilled technicians often fail in business happens all the time. You know, when we see, you know, plumbers who were extremely successful or an electrician is extremely successful, or a contractor who’s really good at their job, uh, and they were an excellent employee and probably the top performer on their team.

And then they go into business and doesn’t actually work out for them. So that, that technical expertise isn’t as correlated to the success in the business as these people, uh, think, uh, you know, you would think that you just, you’re, you’re your own rationale. And I think if they’re better at this job, that must make the, there’ll be a good business owner and it just doesn’t seem to correlate around that fact. Can people succeed in business without knowing the trade themselves? Yeah. So there’s the other flip side of it where you know, it just because you’re good at the trade, uh, or that skill, you might, it might not work, but then there’s people who are, they’re not good at it at all, but they can run a successful business. No, they might not even have that ticket. They might not be a plumber or electrician or a contractor, but they run a successful contracting business.

Um, you know, or you get a, uh, a physician who’s an average physician, but they run a, a fantastic clinic and they don’t employ dozens of doctors. Edmonton Business Coach, so, you know, you’d get a guy like a Richard Branson who owns a business in every single discipline and I, you, he doesn’t know how to fly a plane or get to the moon or, or build a cell phone top, but he runs businesses and he builds businesses. Um, so, you know, just knowing that technical skill won’t guarantee success. And even if you don’t know that technical skill that you know, it’s been proven that um, if you, your business skills to themselves are more important in this successful business, being good at your trade alone, get you customers. Yeah. So here, here’s what people think is I am the, uh, I’m the, the, the best plumber. I’m the best auto detailer and so everyone’s going to come because they’re going to know about my, about my work.

And it just doesn’t work that way. The, the, the marketing world is, is there’s just so much out there. So just simply doing a good job alone. And I was saying, you don’t do a good job. You have to do a good job to succeed in business. But just doing a good job alone, most people will never know that you’re doing a good job and they’ll never know to call you just by doing a good job alone. Do most business owners under estimate the time required for marketing? Yeah, 100%. So they, they can do a good job, but then they don’t promote to their ideal and likely buyers that they are the leader in this area, that they are going to do a good job. And so they just don’t get noticed. And they think that marketing is something that often, that you, you can do.

Um, you know, periodically when we’re short on work, then we can do marketing. But marketing is IX really difficult as it is. And it becomes even more difficult if you stop and start it. You have to invest more time if you want to do it all at once. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot easier, a lot of most effective marketing initiatives or something that you, they’re more efficient if you do them periodically over time. Uh, but if you stop and start them, the generally not going to work all that well. And business owners, they just completely underestimate the amount of time that it’s going to be required. Not just to do a good job, but to make sure all of your ideal life, the customers know that you can do a good job. If you have good technical skills. Can you afford to ignore your numbers?

No, you still can’t. You know, going back, knowing your numbers, you know, you businesses, they fail because they can’t get enough customers and they fail because they run out of cash and business. They’re not looking at their numbers. So, and most business owners are, you know, don’t have an accounting degree. They’re not a finance person and they might have too much of that. Do it yourself attitude. And so, you know, they, they, they’re, they’re not looking at their numbers because they don’t know what to look at, um, or the looking at the wrong numbers all together. So it’s really important that, uh, you know, the business, they cannot ignore their numbers, that this is something that you need to look at. You can’t just delegate to someone else to look after the numbers. You need to know the number. And generally, if you want to build any size of a business, you need to pay someone a who can put the right numbers in front of you and give you right analysis on those numbers.

So you can make good decisions on good numbers. If you know a technical skill that can’t teach that skill, will you be successful? No. No. So just because you’re really good at it, your business is going to be, you know, the growth of your business is going to be turned by how many other people you can teach to do that technical skill. So if you have no desire to teach anybody a skill, don’t be a business owner. You know, do not start a, uh, a plumbing contractor business if you don’t want to teach other plumbers, Edmonton Business Coach, because you’ll, you’ll never have anything more than a job really. Um, so if you want to grow your business and you’re going to have to, and not just to teach other people have probably get excited about teaching other people and probably enjoy it too. How do checklists and templates help average technicians perform at higher levels?

So you have to realize that all of the people that you’re going to hire into your business, a lot, a lot of them aren’t going to have the same technical abilities that you probably, most business owners start a business. They become a top performer on a team and they want to move to another team that they start, uh, because they, they think that the, you know, they can magically find other people who are like them. But a lot of people, they just take a job because they want to take a job and they haven’t spent the time, uh, invested in getting that, that good at it. Edmonton Business Coach, and even if they wanted to spend the time, they might not have had the right resources available or they might not know how to do the things the way you want to do them. So the only way that you’re going to coach that average employee up is to have those checklists and templates, which is kind of the recipe for success is like, you know, you want to, you want a bit, bake a successful batch of cookies, we’ll write down the recipe.

It’s the same in any business, you know, if you want to handle a particular situation correctly, write down with that recipe for success is what are the checklist of the things you need to look at and what are the templates that you need to use. Um, and then you can turn the, the average technician and into a high level technician. Um, and, and that’s really the, the name of the game. Can you advocate setting the strategic direction for the business? Yeah, you, you, you need to set that strategic direction for the business. You know, normally should take the place of a, of a business plan and that’s not something that you can think will, will work itself out. You actually do need to look at where, where am I right now? Where do I want to go a whole and how am I going to get there and lay that out.

Um, and that’s something that you as a business owner actually need you to do and you need to do it and write it down in some sort of formal matter and, and, uh, you know, improve on that every single year. Um, so you, you need to take time out of your data, set that strategic direction and formalize. And when I mean formalized, I mean put it in writing that strategic direction where you are, where you want to go and the exact steps you’re going to take to get there. What normally happens, but owners don’t take an active role in the queue. Yeah. So a lot of business owners, they’ll, you don’t think we can, you can hire an external HR firm or they get just one person in their business. They, you look after the recruiting, that’s fine. You look, but then they complain when they don’t get people who are on board with the mission.

Well it is, I don’t like this person. They don’t do things this way. Eight, Oh, you didn’t take any time to hire them. You know, the people that you bring to the business are much more important than any one job. So, you know, if you’re taking all your time and just looking at, I’m completing this one job and working on this one customer, will, that person that you’re going to bring in to the business, they’re going to affect the relationship that you have with potentially all of your customers and multiple jobs over time. This is where you need to be allocating your time is making sure I’m seeing enough people that I’m meeting them and these people who have, you know, are consistent with the values that, that I have and the objectives that, that we have as a business. Edmonton Business Coach, you know, that’s uh, uh, you know, probably the better use of your time for most business owners, even though it’s, it can be hard because usually that employee doesn’t pay off for a while until they come into the business until they get trained.

But if you don’t take the right people, take the time to get the right people on the bus in the first place. Edmonton Business Coach, you know, you’re probably not gonna be happy with the results. Do Your Business owners under estimate the time required for change in leadership? Yeah, 100%. So most people think that that training is something that’s going to happen overnight. They don’t have a way to, to train them and they don’t have, uh, uh, even after you go through a training program, what is that ongoing training? You know, what looks good today to a customer will not look good in five years, they’re going to expect more. And that’s just the way businesses are. So if you don’t have time set aside to do that training with staff, do you know, first of all is you need to be doing training yourself to learn new skills and then you know, to pass that training on to your staff.

So, so they can get better. You know, the team is not going to get better and you’re, you’re, you’re going to blame the staff that, you know, it was, you know, that person’s fault or you know, and they don’t work as hard as I do. Well, guess what, how much time did you take to try to train them to be better? You know, how much time have you invested in leadership to communicate the values of the business? And most business owners, they completely underestimate how long and how often you have to communicate what those values are, uh, to the employees. And if you do communicate it to them often and consistently, they know people generally want to perform. They don’t want to be bad at their job and a lot of times it’ll work out. But if you don’t communicate it often, they simply, they’re confused and they don’t really know what to do.

So, Edmonton Business Coach, God to take the time to train and do leadership activities and it’s got to be consistent. It’s got to be something in your calendar. It’s not something that you can just not do because they have another job that I want to work on. Well guess what? You’re spending all your time working on those jobs because you’re not training anybody to help you with them. Um, so I think that’s what we have here today. You know, thanks so much for tuning in. As always, please hit the like and subscribe buttons so we can continue to deliver you tips on how to beat the odds of business. And you’ll please leave any comments below on a, on what you thought. Dan, if you have anything else that we’d like to address, some future videos, you’ll please leave in the Collins and we’d love to do it on a future video. Thanks very much.