In this video we're going to be looking at the essential functions of a small business even if you're a solopreneur. It's important to understand what those functions are and how you go about creating an organisational structure and an org chart for it. Yes, even if you're one person you still need to have an org chart and an organisational structure for your business if you're going to be the CEO of your business so that you can have the business you set out to have without sacrificing your sanity. But before we get on with the video, please hit that like button and that subscribe thingy and the notification bell because when you hit the notification bell every Wednesday, I release a new video YouTube gives you a dingaling brings you joy and happiness. So please hit it. Okay. Thank you very much. Let's get on with the video hit it. So time and time again, I’ve come across small business owners and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and they come to me and they say Tamar, I am working 10 12 15 16 hours or more a day. I am burning the midnight oil. I am working seven days a week and if there were eight days in a week, I would be working nine and I am just I cannot keep up with this. There is no way this is sustainable. I got into business in the first place so that I can have flexibility and the freedom and all of that good stuff and I've got none of it what's going on is this whole business thing a big lie or what? It was a scam. I got into it. No, it's not a scam but we've all been there as well. If anyone tells you, if any business owner tells you that they have had it easy then they're flat-out lying because we've all been there but what we've done is we found a better way and this better way is being able to be the CEO of your own business or work on the business rather than inside it and the sooner that you get to that position inside your business onside onside your business. If you get to that position as soon as you can get to that position the better. So how do we go about doing this? If you have a look at this video up here, I talked about the role of a CEO and how to run your business like a CEO in terms of the strategy in terms of being able to set a vision and then being able to work on the business communicating your vision and strategy. Hiring and building a team as well as making sure that you've got enough money in the bank. And in this video I talk about when you should start hiring and how you go about doing it and this video particularly kind of ties the two together because what you need to do is once you understand what your role is as a CEO and how and when you should start hiring and building a team what you need to know is okay. So what are the functions in my business? What are these essential functions? And what roles do I need to fill? So that I can actually deliver the business and the services or the product that I need to have inside my business. So the next step what I would typically suggest is basically say, right? Okay. So.. if you are thinking about your business strategically map out what your business is going to look like in three years time. Map it out and say right this is what my business will be like now dream a little bit here but dream sensibly and and make sure that it's feasible and say this is what my business is going to be like and this is how it's going to operate and these are the functions and the roles inside my business that I will need to make that business work in three years time and draw out an organisational chart for it now and I guarantee and I almost guarantee that you are trying to run all of these roles and do all of these rolls right now today. So what you need to do is you need to understand right? I have all of these functions in my business and this is what I would like my business to be like in 3 years time. What I'm going to do is I'm going to wear the hat of all of these roles or as many as I need to be if I'm one person if I've got three or five divide these roles amongst the number of people you have in the business best suited to who can actually do what and then on a given day you wear that hat and you say, today I'm going to be sales tomorrow I'm going to be marketing tomorrow I'm going to be operations and so on and so forth. And what we're going to do is we're going to break down in this video the essential functions within a business so that you can understand what you can put through on your organisational chart and your structure for want of a better phrase. So what we're going to do is we're going to say right here are the roles that I need to have in my business in three years time and here are the functions that I have inside my business and work towards them. So let's have a look at what the most important functions inside a business are inside a small business and let's start breaking them down one by one. So in no particular order, the first function that I'm going to talk about is the finance function after all business is about making money and every single business no matter what size it is or what industry it's in is going to have a finance function and it's also part of the role of being a CEO is to ensure that you've always got enough cash in the bank now, I'm not suggesting that you go away and do all of the financial sort of aspects that you need to do in your business. Actually, it's one of the first things that gets outsourced out to a bookkeeper or to an accountant that as the company grows and the financial activities become more and more you will probably need to bring in people in house into the business as well as grow an entire finance department and have a CFO but keeping it down to its very basic level. It's literally about maintaining and understanding cash flow into the business, budgetting and making sure that your company's financial statements are in order. So next up are two very separate and different functions, but usually grouped together sales and marketing and they are very different functions, but I'm going to talk about them together because a lot of times they are bunched up together. So marketing is about developing and creating awareness and interest in the product or service that the business is is much is marketing for want of a better phrase is providing. So creating awareness creating the brand creating the sort of the interest in the product sales takes over and coordinates with marketing once that interest is generated to be able to deliver the revenue and convert those marketing messages to actual revenue and sales to the business and it's a simple as that and traditionally they were very very separate things. But as technology has evolved and websites have kicked in and there has been a sort of a blend between the two and that's why a lot of times they are treated as one division or one function, but they are actually technically two very different functions. And when you are drawing up your organisational chart, make sure that you understand that as your business grows. Do you want how much marketing do you want in terms of the function and how much sales and what technology and human resource roles are going to play a part in what you need your business to achieve. So once you've sold your product or service next up is customer support and customer service and that's another function which typically doesn't play a big role when you're very small but as the number of sales that you have increases the amount of after sales support and customer service that you need to provide is going to increase so that so bear that in mind when you your company is growing and when your business is growing that customer service is also a separate function of your business. So looking at a little bit internally into the business. We've got the operations function and the operations function is responsible for all the processes that happen both outside and inside the business. So they are responsible for efficiency. They are responsible for quality. They're responsible for capacity. And remember what we've been talking about in a lot of the videos that I've had in terms of the systems and the processes being very very important if you're going to run your business as a CEO where things can be repeated and things can be of high quality and you can hire in people who can actually replicate what you do and so on and so forth having the operations in there is going to be crucial to achieving that goal. And that doesn't necessarily mean for manufactured product or a service. It can also be for the systems and the processes inside your business and there are a lot of times that entrepreneurs such as yourself and and me most of us, most of us are visionaries. If you haven't read the book Rocket Fuel. I'm going to link down to it below. Please read that book because it's an eye-opener. If you haven't actually come across this concept, you're either a visionary or an integrator and most startup entrepreneurs or small business owners are visionaries where they have the shiny object syndrome where they are be like, oh look I can do this. Let me create this. What an amazing idea. Let's do it. Let's have a go. Okay now it's time to sell it. Oh shiny object. Look at this and they've left the other one behind. I've been there. Don't worry. I'm not making fun of you. I've been there that I'm just talking about myself as much as anyone else. But what we need in that situation is someone called an integrator who can come in and look at the operations of the business put down the processes put down the systems and actually make sure that the operation ticks along on the daily basis efficiently like clockwork and we can go away and be the visionaries and come up with concepts and ideas and all of these things. You're either going to be a visionary or an integrator. If you're a visionary great do that and get an integrator someone in operations to be able to make sure that the company runs efficiently if you're an integrator and you love processes and spreadsheets are your thing and all of these things fantastic do that and get someone who is a visionary who can actually have a foresight to really scale and grow the company. It's very very rare. Very rare that you can do both of these things like effectively together. So that's why if you're going to scale a business at the very minimum you're going to have to have two of these these two people inside the business so that we can actually A) come up with amazing ideas and B) make sure that the business runs efficiently and that's that's why as a business grows you're going to have the CEO who is the person who's the who's laying down the strategy and the vision and you've got the COO who’s the chief operating officer who makes sure that all the operations within the business of working like clockwork. So another very important function in any business is the admin / management side of things and the admin is more about the business planning and the reviews and the admin stuff which is incredibly exciting and I will happily give it over to anyone else who finds it incredibly exciting and the best thing since sliced bread, whereas the management and the strategic planning and the strategic decision-making and all of these kind of things are stuff that I will find incredibly exciting and somebody else will find incredibly boring and they will say don't like sliced bread anyway, you know don't like the stuff. So that's why it's really important to get the right people to do the right roles because what you're going to find incredibly boring you will find someone else out there who will find incredibly exciting and vice versa. So getting the right people to do the right roles is going to be really really crucial and it's one of the secret ingredients to making sure that your business really succeeds. So another type of function that you'll find in your business is the IT function and that depending on the type of business that you're running will be very small or incredibly takes over the major operations of your business. For example, if you're a tech based business or you are a purely online based business, but in general an IT function will predominantly be there in nearly all cases now of business and if you don't have an IT function then welcome to 2020. Time to have an IT function. So this type of function is typically in a small business completely outsourced and that's the legal function but it is a really really important function to be on top of in your business so that you do not trip up and do not get caught out. It can be anything from drafting up contracts to the structure of your business to you know, looking at legal aspects of deals and acquisitions. So on and so forth make sure you understand what legal aspects you need to be on top of in your business. Make sure that it's catered for and accounted for. So depending on the type of business that you have. Some of these functions may also be relevant to you. So I'm going to list them very quickly. So for example research and development R&D, if you've got an innovative product or solution you may have an R&D function. Also you may have a production function. If you have a manufacturing base product similarly, you might have a distribution function where you're distribution and you've got distribution channels for the product or service that you are actually providing. So these are some other functions that may also be part of your business and it's going to depend on the business that you have to decide whether or not it's relevant to you. So here's one the not a lot of people talk about and that's the purchasing function. And yes in the beginning most likely you're going to be the purchasing function person. But as your business grows and depending on what type of business it is, these are going to be equipment, supplies, IT, software and so on and so fourth and it's a product. It might be raw material. So on and so forth. The purchasing function is going to get larger and larger and it's going to get out of control if you just try and keep it in your control. So the idea behind this and actually the idea behind all of what I've been saying is once you identify all of the functions that you are operating in your business within your business map how to this organisational structure put yourself at the top and then put down the admin and then the operations, and then the sales and the marketing and so on and so forth and draw out this organisational structure of what it would look like for your business in three years time and understand that all of these functions are not you and if if it they are just you at the moment then congratulations. You are Superman and you are Superwoman. But if you carry on like that like I've mentioned before you will burn out. So the idea behind it is once you begin to understand that these are other functions that are not your responsibility because your responsibility as CEO is to put down the strategy, communicate the strategy, build your team. So on and so forth, make sure there's enough cash in the bank as we mentioned in this video here, which is how to run your business like a CEO part 1. So once we understand that that's your role all of these other functions are not your role and they need to be given to the right people as soon as it's practically possible and when it makes business sense, and that is how you start growing and building your business like a CEO and you begin to understand that actually you do not need to do absolutely everything inside the business. In fact, you should not be doing that. Now if you're interested to find out a little bit more about this, I've got a link down there below where you can download a free document which will walk you through these different functions within your business and it will help you will give you some examples of different organisational charts and it will help you build out your own organisational chart and structure for your business and understand the roles and the functions within your business. So the link will be down below in the description click on it and it will take you to a link where you can download it. So that's it for now. Please like and subscribe and I'll see you next time.
