Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

In my article Promote your small business with a press release I’ve said “Being a small business founder I know that sometimes you are so busy with doing the actual work that needs to put cash in your bank that you don’t even get to think at some business processes that are not really so hard.”

I think I didn’t really choose the best words to describe the fact that sometimes you don’t see the forest because of the trees – you are so absorbed in doing your daily tasks that you forget that your real job as an entrepreneur is to create value. Katrina Sawa’s article  Improve Your Business taught me that there is a better wording to describe this situation: you should be Working “on” your business and not “in” your business: “What I’ve found is that most entrepreneurs are not taking the time to work “on” their businesses, but struggle and stress out “in” it. Unfortunately, I see hundreds of small-business owners and entrepreneurs each month who are struggling to “get it all done.”"

Ok, now, what does this really mean? Shouldn’t you be taking care of your customers and put all efforts into providing the best service available?

Yes you should. But somewhere in the process you should create value. Creating value is actually different that doing the work for a client – probably the easiest way to think about it is what is left if you take all your current customers out.

So if you take all your current customers out, what is left? It doesn’t sound too well not having customers and work to pay the bills. Value means for example if in the process of serving your customers you build up a site that is a great resource. Value could mean a great team – if you are providing services, having the right team of employees is a real asset. Value could mean the company value if you want to sell it today. Value can mean the assets the company has acquired: buildings, vehicles, anything. Value can mean good references from your customer.

Of course you could say that you are already building the value of your company, but when was the last time you did something for your employees not just to improve the quality of the services they do for the customers but just to build up their value?

Sending up a newsletter regularly to your subscribers could be a value if it’s something they expect and use and receive each month at the same date. Not all your customers are a value. But your fans or customers that are happy about your services are a value. Having a branding book is a value. Networking it’s a value.

Everything that remains if you take out your current deals and customers is value. When was the last time you built your value?