Business is a Language That Every Entrepreneur Needs To Learn

Recently I was reading an article in Entrepreneur magazine about a very successful businessman who bought a franchise for a restaurant. He managed it for 2 years and couldn’t turn a profit. Finally, he put himself through the franchise training and realized that he didn’t know the first thing about how to manage this restaurant. After the training, he doubled the revenue and profit of his restaurant. He noted, “I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

Everyday I meet business owners who are having the same problem. They are trying to run their businesses without learning the specifics of their particular business model or without having had any prior business training.

Then they blame themselves when they don’t make the money they want or they can’t push their businesses to the next level.

Can you relate? Are you at a place where you just feel stuck and you can’t even figure out exactly why? Or perhaps you are working harder than you want to or need to? Or the efforts that you’ve put in just aren’t panning out the way you want?

It isn’t your fault. And business skills aren’t really taught anywhere in school. Even with an MBA, I’ve spent upwards of $80,000 (way upwards) learning from coaches who have been successful in service businesses like mine. And it has been worth every dollar.

So please stop beating yourself up. And stop operating in the dark 😉 Business is a language, just like any other language. You wouldn’t expect yourself to land in Spain and know how to speak fluently. So why do you expect yourself to run your business successfully if you’ve never had a business class or teacher?

And similar to learning Spanish, you aren’t going to be fluent overnight, and there will be challenges along the way. So you may not be perfect from the get-go and you will make mistakes.

Just like Spanish, there are also different levels in business, and different things to focus on at every level. There are different actions to focus on to get you to $60,000, to $100,000, to $250,000 and so on. You aren’t expected to know all of these nuances ahead of time. But it is helpful to understand what actions you need to take at the moments in which you need to take them.

So if you find yourself stagnating, overwhelmed, confused or if you’ve just hit a plateau – it might be time to invest in learning more about the business language from a coach or program that you trust and respect. Just make sure you do your research and set up some conversations to make sure that the program is right for you.

Give yourself the gift of translation. Trust me, it is so much easier when you can speak the language.

Leave me a comment on the blog and let me know what you think.