Are You a Great Leader or Just a Boss?

There’s no doubt that if you want to create a successful business that will deliver any kind of time or financial freedom, then you have to put together a great team that does great work.

It’s the single biggest challenge you’ll face as a business owner, in my opinion.

For me, your team is the main factor in allowing you to scale up your business.

Scaling up your business will allow you to grow your revenue.

It’s what will allow you to have more ‘free time’

It’s what will allow you to have a better quality of life, whatever that looks like for you.

But to do it, you need to put together a ‘crack’ team, and that has never been easy.

Right now, it seems like it’s even harder.

When I opened the food hall in my core retail business, we took on 25 new team members overnight - we doubled in size.

What could be so hard about that?

The answer was everything.

I learned that you just can’t build a great team that does great work overnight.

It takes time and it takes energy.

It takes knowledge and it takes great skill on your behalf as the business owner.

Four years on, and only one of those 25 people remained on my team.

Next week, I’m giving a presentation on building a team with real ‘Impact’.

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned over the past 35 years and created a training program for my ‘Impact Retail Butchers Business and Marketing Club’ members.

This week, pulling all the content together and giving the presentation it’s structure, has been fascinating.

I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned from myself, when thinking deeply about my own experiences.

It was like teacher becoming student.

While doing this work, I had a great catch up with one of my clients, Nigel Alderson.

Working with Nigel over the past twelve months has been intriguing.

He’s done an amazing job with his business.

Not only has he grown his revenue, but he’s reinforced his team and they’re doing great work.

Three weeks ago, Nigel was faced with what he described as ‘One of the toughest weeks of my career so far’.

Two of Nigel’s team suffered major health setbacks at the same time as two of his family members were rushed to hospital – I’m pleased to report they are doing okay now.

Nigel went on to say ‘Despite all this we pushed on and had a great week's trade. Our big January promotion was flying, we organised and promoted Burns night, found and employed a new butcher and arranged an interview for a new sales assistant - all in a week’s work’.

Nigel told me that he was only able to cope with and achieve all of this because of the great team he has.

They did everything they could to allow Nigel the time to do what he had to do and to be there for those who needed him.

Nigel is a great leader.

And what I’ve learned is that it’s much better to be a great leader, than just being a boss.

People work for a boss because they have to.

People work for a leader because they want to.

Have a great week.

Mark