Who is the Most Important Person in Your Business?

by Rick White, President 180BIZ                                                            (Estimated Read Time 3 minutes)

What do I want to talk about today? I want to talk about YIOU. When it comes to business, who's the most important person in the world? Most people will say, “It's the customer.” I once heard Jeffrey Gitomer say this, and I thought it was absolute genius. He said, “If there are only two of you left on the planet and one of you has to die, who will it be? And 99 times out of a hundred, it's the customer. This proves that you are indeed the most important person in the world. That's okay. It's a good thing because I think that gives us drive.

Here are some things where it's not so cool to focus on you.

Don’t let everything in your business surround you.

1. YOU doesn't work when everything in the business surrounds you. It's not sustainable. It's draining. And it ends up tying you to the business always. You must learn to empower and delegate. You must create a team that does the job better than you.

Don’t let your world stop at the end of your nose.

2. The second YOU that doesn't work for you or your team when you are client-facing is being focused on you. It's when your world stops at the end of your nose. That’s called the perception of self-interest. If I'm a customer and I feel like everything you are talking about is about you and for you, I'm not interested. I'm out. Perception of self-interest is a trust killer. When you're dealing with a client or one of your team members, if your focus stops at the end of your nose, you're going to have very limited engagement and very limited success. Be aware of what it is we want, but then focus on what they need and what they want. Always stay curious. Don't judge.

Don’t let your business become your identity.

3. And here's the third YOU that doesn’t work, and the driver for this conversation. When something goes wrong in the business, when car count drops or sales aren't quite what they should be, etc., you get so engaged with the business that you see it as an identity flaw wrapped up in the business. You're so entangled that your business is part of your identity.  That is not the case. Your business is not you. Your business is something you created. Let's say the shop slows down, there's not as much sales, what happens? You immediately go into ass-kicking mode. You immediately think, “Oh, I suck. I can't do this. Why did I have this? Where are you focused? You're focused on you. This is where the world stops at the end of your nose. Nothing gets better. So understand that your business is a separate entity. It's over there and you are here. It gives you objectivity. You're able to see it from a disassociated perspective. You don't have all the emotion in it so you can be more effective. The second thing it does is it helps you because you're more creative. When you go into ass-kicking mode, you don't see possibilities. You don't see options. You stare at the problem and you may think you are the problem. You are not the problem, the problem is out here.  You must do something different.

Please share this video.  We have our Shop Owner’s Round Table, on the second Thursday of every month, 7 p.m. Eastern, and we would love you and your friends to drop by. Shop owners only. And then we have our upcoming Pocket Business Genius webinar on the second Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. 

God bless. stay safe, have some fun, and go make some money.  Take care.

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