How does your business mirror your stage in life?

There can be no doubt that a small business owner’s venture largely reflects their personal stage in life and often their personality. The key is understanding this relationship and working out how to leverage it effectively for your business.

Many times, an owner’s character is what creates the business culture of their organisation. As businesses grow then the owner’s personality has a smaller impact because other supervisors and managers start to flavour the soup or “the way things are done around here”. However, we will focus on understanding things when the owner is very much, part of the business.

So what are the stages of a person’s life?

A person’s life is said to have three stages. These stages are learning, aquiring assets and giving back to society. These stages aren’t equal in length and are generally individual after the initial education of a person. I have known children who start giving back to society and I have also known some senior citizens who still are focussed upon acquiring assets. So balance the below with a modicum of understanding that we are discussing concepts and not iron clad rules.

Learning

This includes primary school and high school. Then things start to split into a few streams. Some people leave high school early and start work including traineeships and apprenticeships. Obviously you are still learning as you start your new career but the learning changes from that of the classroom.

Others progress further into high school and once again either go into the workforce or progress into university. The difference here is that those who go into a job from the end of high school don’t tend to go to TAFE or apprenticeships. By default, they enter the second phase of their lives.

Then you get the university tragics. Some start, some finish, some keep going incurring massive debt along the way. These people have a much longer first section of their lives to the extent that they could be learning for twice as long as the person who finished school earlier.

Please realise that I am not endorsing one choice over another. Essentially, I am just explaining that the first stage of a person’s life revolves around learning and that this can be 10 or 20 years for different people.

Acquiring assets

This is the fun part. We work hard and play hard. We buy cars, houses, stuff and technology. It’s the ‘who dies with the most toys wins’ syndrome. Some of us are smart and actually save and invest but most of us just acquire things of various monetary or emotional value – including collecting kids!

Giving back

This is generally the mentoring and teaching stage of our lives. We impart knowledge into our kids in the hope that they will be more successful at climbing life’s ladder of success than ourselves. This is the stage when people start to volunteer for everything from your kids sports team to helping community. (Yes, you will find many blog writers including yours truly at this stage of life!)

So which stage is your life at and how does this reflect upon your business?

Most business owners can’t disassociate themselves from their business. So what you often find is that someone at the learning phase of their life looks at business like an adventure where learning is foremost. Often you find the initial ventures of our entrepreneurs in this mould. They often fall into money if they are lucky but most use their first few ventures as learning what really makes business tick. People at this stage are often open to learning from others such as accountants, advisors and lawyers.

People who are in the acquiring asset stage of their lives will treat their businesses very differently than those who are in the learning stage of their lives. For an acquisition stage person, their business is a financial model aimed to create wealth. This can be either directly by profit or by building the base for later sale. These people are often about making the sale, cutting costs, aggressively growing market share and fighting competitors.

People who are at the giving back stage of their lives reflect this in their business by having a generally slower pace than the asset acquisition folks. This is because the ‘giver backs’ have seen a few more sunsets and feel that life has more importance than just making the next months profit target.

Tips and traps for each stage

Firstly, a business needs a balance or at least a bit of each learning, acquiring asset and giving back within it’s DNA. Too much of one will lead to disaster no matter which one it is. My first ‘learning venture’ cost me close to $250,000. Wish I knew then what I know now.

Meanwhile having too much focus upon asset acquisition can lead to stress, poor workplace culture and issues generally caused by greed.

Finally, focussing too much on giving back, even for not for profit ventures, can lead to financial collapse or an unhealthy reliance upon government funding.

The trick is to understand which part of life you are at. Then understand that you need balance. Those who are professional managers can often disassociate themselves from their business which means they can create all three stages in their business deliberately. However, most owners are better off having another person to balance them. This could often be a younger manager who constantly drives you nuts with new ideas and passion for the things that you have passed over in recent times.

Alternatively, create a business plan which has elements of each three styles integrated within it. Then have someone hold you accountable for it. Such a person could by a life or business partner, a mentor or even business coach/ advisor.

So work out what stage of life you are at, identify the appropriate strengths and weaknesses within your business because of this and make changes to leverage your passion while still improving your business.

Peter Bender is a founding partner of Consultant in a Flash! and can be contacted on 0421 253 771, by email or via Facebook. Alternatively, feel free to leave a comment with this blog.