Start with a strong Business Plan. Many companies start out without a plan and destined to fail. Your business plan should be reviewed and re-evaluated every six months. The business environment is ever changing and being prepared is essential.

Learn how the best in your field do it and adopt their system but improve it to make it different and your own. You have to do things differently than others in order to separate your company from and elevate it above the rest of the field. Nothing else but systems will guarantee that you will do business tasks right every time.

Your decision makers must be innovative, surround yourself only with qualified people and treat your employees well. Pay them as they were your partners and share with them how the work will be done. Get input from them, the sharing will drive the commitment on the part of the employees. I certainly recommend implementing an employee stock option plan. Ownership by the employees is providing a much greater commitment.

Don’t have “sick days” because it will just be abused. There should be no differentiation between a sick day and vacation day. Give your employees a certain number of days off and they can use them any way they want. If they exceed the number of days allotted … there is no pay.

Your managers should not do the work of your employees, their job is to do the management job, otherwise the organization will suffer.

Have a quality control in place and regularly ask your clients and customers for feedback. Every employee who deals with clients and customers should have the authority to handle complaints.

Regardless of the size of your company, you have to remember you don’t have a job. You own a business.

Source:

John S. Rabi is the President  & CEO of Typically Tropical Properties. He was named “Hawaii Businessman of The Year” in 2003. His company is a two-time HO’OULU award winning company and was the 8th Fastest Growing Small Company in Hawaii in 2006 and the 25th Fastest Growing Company in Hawaii in 2007, respectively, by the Pacific Business News.

 Julie Mackey
 Emerald Bookkeeping Services, LLC
 www.emeraldbookkeeping.com