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The Skill Phase

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  4. Mindset
  5. The Better Thinking Process
  6. The Skill Phase

The Skill Phase

The Skill Phase

The Better Thinking Process

We move onto the second phase of our Better Thinking Process where we assess the skills within you and the employees you have in your company. Before you can act on your set targets, you need the skills, training, or education required to do the work required to reach your targets.  

For example, if you what to create a paid marketing campaign on Google, you need to realize that this is a fairly complicated process, and you are now faced with the central question of this phase: do I hire or acquire the skill needed to achieve my target?

Before we move on, ask yourself this, why do I want someone with skills to help me complete the steps towards my target?  The answer is simple, it saves you time and probably money too.

While it costs money to learn or hire someone to do things for you, consider our previous example of creating an advertising campaign on Google Ads. If done incorrectly, it will not be effective and a waste of time and money. In fact, regardless of how much money you pump into Google Ads, it will not produce the desired results and your money is wasted unless you know how to use this digital advertising tool. Since Google is only giving you access to the tools and their network to advertise on, you still need to figure out how to use those tools and where to effectively spend your budget.

On the other hand, if you take the helm on Google Ads and other marketing tasks, how much time are you willing to spend on it daily? Would this be as effective as a full-time or even part-time employee doing it for you? Can you even set aside four uninterrupted hours a day to manage a large ongoing project?

On the flip side, if you hire someone to oversee your Google Ads and other marketing tasks, you will see a return on your investment if they have experience or training on these tools. Find the expertise or knowledge to efficiently achieve something, and by finding this talent you are overcoming the Skill Gap. We cannot simply believe in the power of the mind alone to achieve our targets as we need actionable steps to act on.

 Let’s take a deeper look at both the Skill Gap and the Application Gap and see what they entail. First, ask yourself this question central to the skill phase:

“Should I Hire or Acquire New Skills?”

 

The Skill Gap

When you come up with an idea or innovation to grow your business, you have two gaps you need to overcome before it can be implemented. We have named these gaps the Skill Gap and the Application Gap. The Skill Gap can be imagined like this: you are standing before a cliff, and below you are choppy waters, and on the other side of the chasm is where you want to go. But how do you safely traverse this watery gulf? In this metaphor you are your company, the waters below represent a ton of hard work, and on the other side is what your company looks like with the target implemented. You clear this mental hurdle by first realizing you need the skills to safely cross and implement your target. Again, are you the one crossing this gulf and gaining the needed skills, or are you hiring someone who experienced traversing these waters on your behalf?
The Application Gap comes next,  and this gap refers to knowing the first steps you need to set to achieve your target. It is easy to imagine and say, “let’s boost our sales”, but how do you go about generating more revenue? The Application Gap is the recognition that you may not know the steps you need to set to achieve your goal. There are a lot of books, resources, and blogs that conveniently do not mention how you actually implement a new idea. At its core, the Application Gap is taking what you have learned and creating steps to figure out how to get it into your business. If you are unsure what to do with your new skills or knowledgeable employee, the Services Strategist is here to also advise you. Let us know! Our team can create these steps for you, get you to act, and gets that ball rolling. We do this by identifying and implementing the key process your business is missing. We keep you and your team accountable with regular check-ins. Keep you on track by pointing you in the right direction, so you do not get lost and suffer the pitfalls that come with all growth. We pride ourselves on the application of ideas because this is where a lot of the business education books on the market fall on their face. There are a ton of business books on the market, but they all fall short because they cannot get you to act, nor do they even talk about it in some cases. In fact, there is no way a 200-page book can cover even one of these topics below, yet the books claim to be the solution to all your business’s problems. The Service Strategist can help you find both the talent and resources you need to overcome the Skill Gap and is here to guide you through applying changes to your business. Where to Start?  Before you go willy-nilly and start setting targets, ask yourself some of these questions to evaluate your company and determine where you should start.
  1. If your target is to increase sales to 1 million dollars, do you need to learn sales tactics or marketing, or both?
  2. What is currently lacking in your company? 
  3. Do similar companies have roles/departments I do not?
  4. Why does my company need X? What skills do I need?
  5. The Next job is around the corner, but you can’t see nor are you thinking about it. 
  6. What is your budget?
  7. How many jobs are you looking ahead?
These questions are starting points, many more questions are asked as your company grows. It never ends.

Acquire, Outsource or Hire the Skills?

We now know you need skills to reach a target, so it is time to decide what you will do about it.  Let’s use an example to help us think through whether you will acquire, hire, or outsource something. Let’s say you are creating a sales brochure for a new home service you’re adding to your company. We know that this kind of project is going to take time, skills, and resources to pull off successfully. Certain questions will surface like: do you have suppliers lined up? Do you have pricing worked out?  Who is putting the images assets and descriptions together for the brochure? What software will be used? What printing company will be used? A lot of questions pile up as your target becomes a project. So, there comes a moment where you need to decide as a business owner if this is something you are going to do/learn or pay someone else to do it for you. If you do pay, your role as owner is now a manager, and you must oversee how you are moving towards your target on time and on budget. There will be some skills you can outsource like printing services, and some skills you will want under your roof, like marketing. If we pause on a skill like marketing, you may or may not know this, but most experts have a minimum of three years of training at a college of some kind. Do you have three years to learn marketing as a business owner? Likely, you will not have three years to set aside and learn how to craft effective advertising campaigns. So, in this case, you will hire when you can or outsource it. Not all skill gaps require you to hire or outsource them, and some skills you will want to gain as a business owner. For example, all business owners need both leadership and project management skills and these are best done by the owner so they have a pulse on the company.

What makes you a good leader(owner)?

A good company leader is compassionate, it’s someone whom you would want to stand shoulder to shoulder within a photo, in the trenches, or on the sports field. In business terms, an excellent leader does these things:

Reacting to Growth

As you grow, you will need more employees with specific skills that did not previously exist in your business. While a squad of 5 trucks can be managed by the owner alone, out of a small one-garage shop, a fleet of 30 trucks is a logistical undertaking that requires supervisors, dispatchers, warehouse staff, a bigger parking lot, security, a larger shop, and the list goes on and on. But this is a good problem to have, however you will not have enough bandwidth to shoulder it all.   

Next consider what is your time worth, and what is the return on investment on gaining the skill. If you sign up for a business training course that costs $10,000 dollars in tuition, and it enables you to grow your business by a million dollars over the next year, that is one heck of a return. But when a skill takes too long to learn, and the result is not worth the time you would personally need to invest in gaining said skill, it is time to hire someone with the skills you need.

How to Acquire a Skill—Framework

There is no trick to learning something, it takes reading, repetition, and revision. 

  • Read about the basics
  • Watch videos that explain deeper concepts
  • Test the skill with a first attempt
  • Return to expert material/concepts and see what you did well and not so well

Key Topics of a Trades Business

Our team has already read through these business books, and we can attest to the fact that while they do contain nuggets of wisdom, the books for the most part lack the critical step of either education, real-world application, and/or accountability. And honestly, who has time to read one of these things?  

The authors of these books have good intentions but not even one would say where the time and money come from to make all of these changes. They would drop all these knowledge bombs and then the book ends leaving you to deal with the aftermath of realizing your business sucks in comparison to theirs leaving you directionless and wondering where to start.

The authors have plenty of useful ideas, but their explanation of implementation often falls short. Most of these business books would ask you to write out lists of goals and problems and pretend that this piece of paper alone is enough to hold you accountable.

They offer inflexible ideas that will literally have you locking your employees out of meetings, yes this was one piece of advice we came across. A lot of this ‘worked for me so it must work for you’ mentality.  

That is why we have dubbed this, the ‘Application Gap.’ Every self-help or business strategy book always seems to be missing how you act on the great things they teach you. None of the books on the market took the time to lay out the steps you needed to implement things. That is why company processes are key aspects of our 6 Pillar program because processes help you act out steps that yield predictable results.  

The Million Dollar Promise

The truth is the business owners who often write these books were successful in their tiny slice of America. But these self-help authors often overlook things like environmental factors, customer demographics, and regional differences. They promote a one size fits all business strategy that does not fit your business.

You Are Not Alone

Service Strategist is your ally in the fight to become a better business owner, whatever you need we are here to serve.

At the Service Strategist, the cost is the cost, there is no self-promotion within our courses. We are not promising you millions of dollars, only a better business and the growth that follows it. We will teach you how to do it, and if you need help implementing the strategy, our experts are on standby to walk you through it and hold you accountable. We treat the success of your business as a reflection of our own. We succeed and fail with you!          

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