A major hurdle for people buying a franchise is that, mostly, they end up buying themselves a job. So the retrenched executive spending her money buying into a muffin franchise ends up working a 70-hour week, probably equating to less than $25 an hour. And still needing to finance the $45k loan taken out to buy into the franchise. She has bought herself a job – a bad job. It’s a far cry from buying a business and adopting a business owner mindset.
Mindset is so important in the professional services sector especially for bookkeeping firms. One owner with a staff of 12 said she wanted to “hands-on” role because she wanted to “keep up with the technical side of bookkeeping.” Given the underlying instability in the compliance-based business model, a competitive advantage for the bookkeeping business lies in keeping up with the needs of the client, which are not all about technical expertise.
SMEs are increasingly looking for more from their bookkeeper. With the explosion of cloud-based accounting solutions to manage their numbers, business owners need a bookkeeper who is more business-minded in their interactions with the business owner. Many clients are now conducting business from their mobile devices and have access to new dynamic applications to analyse business performance.
The business owner’s mindset
It may be a fairly vague term to some, but mindset is really a simple thing to grasp: your thoughts, beliefs and feelings make up your mindset. Your mindset creates your behaviors and your behaviors bring forth your success and failures.
Business owners think about where they want their revenue to be in six months from today and a year from today. Business owners have a goal and a plan of action to achieve the goal. There is clarity of intention; there is focus and commitment, there is courage to change, take a risk. In short, a success mindset.
What do your customers need?
The professional who moves away from being the on-the-job technician or the jack-of-all trades, moves from what they want to sell to their clients to a mindset of focusing on what customers needed, that is, ‘walking in your client’s shoes.’ While bookkeeping is necessary, it isn’t what clients really value. Small business owners want practical advice from their trusted advisors. SMBs don’t have the cash flow to pay high hourly rates so that positions the bookkeeper as the go to person – provided they have the mindset of a business owner.
How well is your business positioned? Or is it just a job that you own?