40: Are you a crap manager?
If your business finances are out of control, customers keep complaining, staff keep leaving and things aren’t getting done, perhaps you’ve got a bad manager in charge. But what if that bad manager if also you? This is Clickstarter, I’m Dante St James. This is episode 40, and Day 6 of my daily series, April Foolproof Your Business where this month, I’ll cover a bunch of quick, useful tools, strategies, marketing methods and ideas to give your small business a shot in the arm. Today… you might be a crap manager. My business now is running ok. It’s growing and the work is getting done. But I’ve just been through the most awful period of work and rework since it began. I am awesome at selling my product. I am great at marketing myself and my business. I have some very successful funnels of clients that are constantly feeding me with new business. I can build websites, transform social media pages, run high-performance digital marketing campaigns and make cool online video. I can train hundreds of people, write and deliver workshops and then meet a dozen new businesses every week and get them on the road to success. But I am a crap manager. I forget to send invoices. I forget to pay invoices. I forget to pay contractors. I forget that some of my clients exist. Seriously. I actually forget ever meeting some of them, so that when I see them again I introduce myself as if I’ve never sat with them for an hour in a meeting and discussed their business before. I sleep in sometimes from being so tired. I miss meetings because my calendar is a mess. I sometimes deliver a project two months after the due date. And why? Am I incompetent? Am I not able? Am I a bad person? Not at all. I’m very capable and motivated. I’m just a terrible manager of my own time, my workflow and all the things that can make or break a business. I am not a good businessman. I am a great salesman, visionary and worker. But those things on their own do not make a business. You need to be able to deliver what you promise. And that’s why I have just employed an operations manager to sort the mess out. I’m a crap manager, but he seems to be far better at identifying holes in my processes and having solutions for them. He’s also far more focused on the delivery end of the business while I’m far better at the acquisition end. Which is a good match because I can now concentrate on the things I like and am good at, and he can pick up the stuff he likes and is good at. That’s because we don’t know everything, can’t be effective at everything and eventually need sleep. Got a topic this month to cover in these shorter, daily versions of the podcast? Email darwin@clickstarter.com.au or drop a message via facebook.com/clickstarter I’ll catch you tomorrow as we continue to help your small business to get known, get found and stay known.