May 25, 2021
What's the one thing... What's the one thing that will make the
biggest difference or impact in my business. I've been asked
this question quite a few times and in today's episode, I'm gonna
try to give my best answer..
Hi, it's Danny, and welcome back to Music Lesson Business
Academy...
The podcast is back and I'll be delivering
episodes, sometimes weekly, sometimes every other week, but often
enough to hopefully keep your mind occupied with ideas, tips,
concepts, and philosophies that can help you as a music teaching
business professional.
So of course there isn't really just one thing that you
can do that will allow you to ignore everything else that's a
vital part of any successful business, and still be successful, but
there is ONE thing that, if ignored will probably cause you to
fail, or at least, certainly limit your success as a
business owner, whether in the music teaching space or
any other business sector.
That one thing is your ability to manage and
mentor people. Notice I didn't say hire or train people. And the
reason I didn't include that is because even though being great at
hiring talent will have a dramatic positive impact on your
business, you can still suck at it and eventually get lucky and
hire a good person,. It just may take you much longer.
The skill that is so lacking in the small
business world is leadership and leadership comes down to those
people skills i mentioned. Managing and mentoring. Most small
business owners have no real experience in this area and it's
honestly one of the harder things to learn. It's not particularly
exciting and sexy and so people avoid it.
I think it's important here to mention the
solo prenuars out there. the solo teacher, the solo youtuber. Don't
think that this doesn't impact you just because you don't have
teachers working for you. Your ability to maintain relationships
with other business professionals, customers, students, and people
you contract to do work for you such as building your website is
crucial to your ability to be uber successful.
Do my employees sometimes piss me off? yes of course they do.
Do they disappoint me? Yes? That's just part of having a team of
people working for you.
However, they more often delight me. They often inspire
me and make me happy and proud that I know them as people. And I
would imagine that they probably feel similarly.
Now there are some good books out there that you
can read to help get you started down the right path and the
classic book" how to win friends and influence people" is still a
great book to start with
But the one concept I want to leave you with today is the idea
of " Understanding".. Understanding this other person's point of
view and where they are coming from. EVEN more so when you disagree
with them. You will get much better results when you listen to your
employees, customers, or business associate's point of view and say
" I understand before you try to influence them in a direction that
is more favorable to you.
And the key is you have to try to really understand, not just
apply some slogans or phrases that make you sound like a clinical
psychiatrist. You have to be you and it has to be real. And again I
can't stress this enough, it's not about letting the person be
right or even think they are right. It's about letting them
feel like they are being heard and allowed to present their point
if view.
I recently had one of these talks with a great
employee of mine. He didn't want to get the vaccine and he's one of
my teachers that does have in-person contact with students. Now I'm
a bit of a science nerd and I know he's reading all the wrong stuff
and falling victim to the misinformation out there, but I can't
really change his mind to the idea of getting vaccinated. But we
were able to talk about it and try to arrive at a
solution.
The point of this story is really more about the fact that we
have a relationship of mutual respect. Even when we
disagree.
Your policies, your rules, whatever you want to call them are
a guide for you to follow. A roadmap to help you navigate the
tricky waters of business, but it doesn't mean you can't find an
alternate route using your GPS ( Good People Skills) to arrive at a
long-term resolution that benefits both of you.
What's the one thing? People skills...
Thanks for listening