What
Leadership?
The title of this article may have you saying:
"My home-based business has no employees at all. Just me. Who am I supposed
to lead?"
Merriam-Webster Online defines a leader as
a person who has commanding authority or influence. Since you are the only person
involved in your business, you must assume a position of leadership over your
entire business at once. If you don't exercise commanding authority and influence
over every aspect of everything that has to do with your business, who
will?
To repeat a common motivational phrase from every MLM
training course I've ever seen, "If it's to be, it's up to me!"
Unfortunately,
there have recently been some awful examples of leaders who disgraced their authority
and influence and have thus denigrated leadership.
Kenneth
Lay and Andy Fastow of the Enron debacle are among the worst. Since then, many
others have betrayed the trust bestowed upon them; there seems to be no end to
"leaders" willing to compromise themselves for personal gain.
Leadership
Qualities
Leadership is about organizing and directing human
activities in such a manner as to contribute in some way to the good of society
in general. To succeed, your business must provide some product or service that
will help your customers. If a leader is successful, he or she will receive personal
gain as monetary reward, if that is the desire. Other leaders will only receive
the satisfaction that the world is better because of their efforts.
Some
people are born with the abilities they need to successfully lead. Others are
taught to become capable leaders. A good example of leadership training is the
military. They have developed the means to produce large numbers of great leaders
in every rank on a continuing basis.
I went into the Army after
completing college and immediately entered Infantry Officer Candidate School.
I repeatedly was asked "why are you wasting your time as an Infantry Lieutenant?"
My answer was quite simple: When you are suddenly placed in command of 40 young
people, many with almost no education, all of whom are away from home and they
are all looking helplessly at you to tell them what to do, you've GOT TO DO SOMETHING!
Being thrust into a situation and having to make crucial decisions is the finest
training you can have. That certainly was not a waste of time.
Leadership
ability, whether natural or learned, comes with the situation confronting the
leader.
An example is a terrible catastrophe caused by an elevator
in a high-rise building that breaks its cables and crashes in a horrible mass
of steel and injured and dead bodies. Among the passengers would have been a couple
of chief executive officers of large companies, as well as numerous lower-level
executives. However, the hero who restores order, calls for help, and saves many
lives by immediately taking charge without an instant's hesitation is the lowest-level
employee around—the elevator operator. The situation required strong leadership
and it immediately came from within someone not normally looked upon for leadership.
Experience
Counts!
Many teachers of leadership say students who have
belonged to organizations or who have worked for a while learn much more than
those with little or no experience. The experienced people have a wealth of knowledge
deep within that is brought to the surface with leadership training. Henry Mintzberg
discusses this idea of students needing some experience in order to get the most
out of leadership classes. He says for training to be effective, the student must
understand what it means to lead and possess substantial knowledge of a particular
use of leadership
As
the owner of your home-based business you've already had to gain a deep knowledge
of your business and you have exercised the personal leadership to go into it.
So the first thing you have to do is lead yourself into your business, as personal
leadership reinforces and uses your own self-discipline.
Why
is this necessary?
There are things needed for you to start
your business in the first place. You have to determine what it is you want to
do (what products or services you will provide), how you are going to market your
business, how much money you need and who will provide it, what office space and
equipment you need and where it will be located, and what your ultimate objective
for your business is and how you will exit from it.
All these
things are significant decisions, and you have to lead yourself into making hard
choices and taking timely action.
Part of your leadership is
to know how much knowledge and planning is really needed before doing anything.
Often so much data gathering, goal setting, and detailed planning are done that
the golden opportunity is lost. Some of this is necessary but how much?
Some
ideas about data gathering are discussed in the Harvard Business Review On
Entrepreneurship. The article says that although entrepreneurs must continue
to ask tough questions about their businesses, to get started they may need to
move quickly. The author, Bhide, says "too much analysis can be harmful;
by the time an opportunity is investigated fully, it may no longer exist."
His
ideas about a quick startup are to eliminate poor ideas early, make a realistic
evaluation of your finances, minimize the time and money allocated for researching
an opportunity, and realize that entrepreneurs in the beginning aren't running
a large corporation: they don't need ALL the answers. Bhide says smart
entrepreneurs jump in and then do what they must do as situations arise.
This
aspect of personal home business leadership means to make yourself go ahead and
do something if the opportunity appears workable. Otherwise, you can analyze and
plan your opportunity out of existence. And here is where your status as an entrepreneur
comes into play. Merriam-Webster Online defines an entrepreneur as "one who
organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise." The
key at this point is to assume business risks. That's why successful entrepreneurs
often achieve phenomenal economic rewards.
Maintaining
Leadership
So, you have decided to go with your business idea,
but you can't just sit back and let it run itself. Though you can automate some
aspects of your business through the use of list managers, autoresponders, and
various labor-saving software, you can never entirely get away from operations.
True, there are many opportunities advertised saying you really
don't have to do anything to be successful. But this statement belies the
reality of leadership in your home business. There will always be difficult choices.
You must continue to provide funds to operate. There will be some kind of monthly
subscription fee often with different levels of participation. Which options will
you decide to use? How many and where will you go to get prospect leads? What
messages will you send them and how often?
Depending on the
business, you may also have to decide among products or services to offer your
customers and whether to spend more time and effort to expand your business and
build profits for yourself. This can involve a great deal of work trying to define
your target market and determining the proper keywords or phrases that will bring
customers to your business. This is necessary because without some way to attract
people, no one will ever come to your store. For some ideas on this, check out
a good article by Dan Fry in the May 31, 2004, issue of SitePro
News. He discusses pay-per-clicks, how to pick keywords, and the use of
Web host statistics to aid in your marketing.
All this is tedious
and time-consuming. But it's just another area requiring personal home-based leadership
skills to make yourself do it.
Take charge and lead
yourself into your successful home-based business. It's not hard. Just do
it.
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