Imagine walking through the African plains, and suddenly you encounter a field of tall elephant grass. (Which are higher than a person’s head ) Blocking your way and you need to get through.
It’s tough, the fight to get through to the other side and in many ways, it’s similar to running a business. We need to get through the daily challenges to get to our GOA, marketing, sales, delivery, going to the bank, firefighting etc.
In business, we would engage people to “cut the grass down” metaphorically this would be our staff.
The managers would be with the staff making sure they cut in the right place, motivating them to keep going and if necessary advice or train.
So where are the leaders, the owners of the company?
They will be looking for the nearest tree so they can climb up and make sure they are cutting in the right direction. Maybe the team are heading in the wrong direction.
For small businesses particularly the owner often needs to take all the roles. Not only cutting the grass, motivating themselves but also making sure they stay true to mission and direction.
In my experience, one of the most significant areas of growth and hardest for new business owners to do is to climb the tree once a month, because that elephant grass is just so terrible and they have to cut it.
Joining a community of other business owners can be that “up the tree” moment. I would also recommend that the community be other small business owners who can understand the challenges and are either going through it or have been through it so that they can share the “traps” and “tricks” to save time, money and resources.
While groups of CEO’s from big companies may appear attractive from a business generation point of view, they have often not experienced building a business from the ground up which has its unique challenges just as running a large company has its unique problems.
Is there a local community for you to engage in, benefit from and contribute to?