Your plumbing contracting firm only exists through the force of your own will. Initially, at least, it had no other reason for being. While that can be a good thing, it’s long been bemoaned as a weakness of this business — any plumber with his own tools and a truck can declare himself president of his own contracting firm and go into business. Somebody gets tired of working for other people, thinks he can do it better himself and has an entrepreneurial seizure.
While your business likely came into being through the force of your own will, as it grows and matures it takes on other reasons for being, such as taking care of your customers, providing for your family and the families of your employees, and to support your community.
What qualifies you to be the president of Acme Plumbing? I’m not asking you what qualifies you to be a plumber. You put in four or five years of an apprenticeship or years of training through an association or trade school. Some of you are engineers. You’ve seen your share of clogged drains, busted boilers and muddy jobsites. What I’m asking is what qualifies you to be president?
That was the theme of a talk that I heard from serial entrepreneur, author and speaker Randy H. Nelson at the recent Nexstar Network meeting in Philadelphia. Nelson has written a book called “The Second Decision,” your first decision being going into business for yourself. His book is subtitled “The Qualified Entrepreneur.”
Nelson started, ran and sold two companies related to job placement of returning military veterans into the private sector. Through his experiences, especially the mistakes, he realized that there are no qualifications to be a business owner. He compared that with prior experience being a submariner in the Navy. The training was rigorous and exacting, but at the end Lieutenant Nelson had his golden dolphins, the pin the said he was qualified to be the Officer of the Deck and run a nuclear submarine. As Nelson puts it in his book, in the military you look at the uniform first. What’s on the uniform tells you what that person knows and is qualified to do.
Leaders must be self-aware, possess self-knowledge and recognize that they need to compensate for their weaknesses. “The growth of the company is limited by the growth of the leader,” Nelson told the Nexstar contractors.
The growth of the company is limited by the growth of the leader.
Most business owners don’t have that self-awareness; they don’t know what they don’t know and don’t try to find out. You better ask the right questions, though, and find out. Your business has grown and it’s not all about you anymore — it’s about what’s best for the company. What do you need to do, what must you do in the next 12 months? Does that fit in with your plan for the next three to five years?
Nelson asked an interesting rhetorical question — say you have a board of directors (most don’t, but it’s a good idea) and your board fired you, what are the three to five big decisions that your replacement must make in the next year?
What are you doing versus what you should be doing? What’s changing in your market? What do your competitors do better than you?
Those are some of the points Nelson makes in his book on what you need to know and do to be a qualified entrepreneur. It’s an easy read, and I can recommend it.