If you’ve been following my blog from the beginning, you will know that I stepped down as president in December 2017 of the company I founded in 1991. In a few paragraphs, I have some important news to share.
My official semi-retirement started in January 2018. It’s been an interesting year for me on so many fronts. For starters, I’ve been able to step back from the day-to-day stress of managing a business, and that’s been the biggest change.
Running a business is extremely stressful. When you’re doing it every day, you sometimes lose sight of just how stressful it can be, but now that I haven’t had a formal management role for over 15 months, I’ve grown to appreciate a few things:
The six most important things I’ve learned over the last 15 months:
Personal:
– How important it is to take care of your physical health. I exercise at the gym at least six days a week, and on warmer days, I like to walk for at least an hour a day.
– How important it is to take care of your mental health. It’s easy to get caught up in all the things that need to be done, but it’s important to ask yourself if you’re living the life that you really want to live. I pulled myself off the roller coaster in August 2017, and you can read more about that here.
– How important family is. Too many people realize this way too late in life. No matter how much money they have, if you ask them on their death bed, their one regret is that they didn’t spend more time with their family, friends, and loved ones—not that they didn’t work more.
Business:
– Have a business plan. Most entrepreneurs I’ve met who are stuck in their business and don’t know how to expand are stuck because they don’t have a business plan. They don’t know where they’re going and, consequently, will never get there.
– Maintain KPIs. I’ve written about this extensively. You need to understand your KPIs. You need to understand your lead acquisition cost, your customer satisfaction scores, your ROI in your sales department, close ratios, and so on. I managed, with no exaggeration, at least 150 data points in my business. Every number tells a story. If you don’t know your numbers, it will be a challenge to know which levers to pull to expand your business. I intend to write more about this in the near future.
– Understand leadership and what it means to lead a company.
What’s the important news?
I started this post by explaining that, in December 2017, I sold the majority share and stepped down as president of the business I founded in 1991. I’ve been sharing my business stories and learning lessons with you on this blog since. I am now proud to say that this blog has over 8,000 subscribers and a loyal following of fellow entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their business and grow their wealth.
For various reasons, the company I founded needs me though, and effective March 27th, 2019, I stepped back in as interim president. I will fill the role for a period of approximately three months as we search for a full-time president.
As somewhat of an aside, if you know of a skilled, energetic, passionate business leader, who is based in Toronto, and who is up for the challenge of running a 50-person operation that is looking to double in the next five years, then please send me an email to: jeff at jeffwiener.com.
So Why Am I Telling You This?
I’ve been sharing not only some of the business lessons I’ve learned over the years with my
As all of you entrepreneurs know, running a successful business isn’t easy work. In fact, it’s filled with a constant stream of challenges. Growing revenues and profits is definitely one of those challenges, and that’s one of the reasons the board has asked me to step back into the business.
Running a business is a full-time, 60-hour a week job. My problem is, I don’t have 60-hours a week to devote to being the President of a company. For starters, I have a number of private clients that take up about 10 to 15-hours a week of my time. I also maintain this blog, my apartment buildings, and all of my other personal affairs, not to mention the fact that I made a conscious decision to step away from the rat race and stress of the day-to-day management of a business.
In order for me to do a good job of cleaning things up in the business in the limited time of 20-hours a week, I have to count on the current management team which includes individuals in marketing, sales, finance, technical, and operations. Fortunately, the people that are in these positions are awesome, which makes my job that much easier. The key to growing a business is finding good people, providing them vision and direction, and then leaving them with enough autonomy to do their jobs.
I’m not the person doing the heavy lifting. The management team is. I need to make sure that they stay focused, engaged, love coming to work, and that each individual has clear expectations set out for them. If we are able to do things right, morale will improve, as will revenues and profits.
I will share with you some of my learning experiences over the coming months. In the meantime, I am coming out of semi-retirement, for a brief few months, to get one more chance at bat.
My plan is to hit a home run. I’ve just stepped up to the plate, so, I’ll let you know how it goes.
One more thing … I have about 10 people from the Toronto area who are interested in a meet-up, which I was hoping to coordinate for May. I’m going to put that off until later this summer when things get a bit quieter for me.
To your continued wealth and business success,
My goal is to help entrepreneurs scale their business, improve profitability, and then, use those profits to create massive wealth. Subscribe to my blog to receive my latest thought on scaling your business and creating wealth.
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