Did you know that 82% of small businesses fail because of cash flow mismanagement?
According to Business Coach and Consultant, Dan Kent, failure to manage, revise, and define expectations is one of the top three areas a business owner struggles. That, grouped with relationships and balance, comprises what he calls the “three pillars.”
“I can always trace a business owner’s struggles back to one of those three places, if not all three,” he says. Kent is the founder of Best Self Coaching, a consulting firm specializing in helping businesses succeed.
As a trusted business owner himself, he not only knows the ins and outs of running a successful business but more importantly, is dedicated to helping other leaders overcome some of the most common business-related challenges.
Kent’s second pillar, relationships, is where he says it “really gets meaty.” This pillar refers to not just one’s relationship with themselves, their colleagues, managers, or customers et cetera. But also their relationship to concepts like money, authority, vulnerability, and sales.
“Their relationships to themselves can, for example, make them not find value in what they bring to their business. They may even experience impostor syndrome, or manifest all kinds of self-sabotage,” Kent elaborates.
His third pillar is about balance. “A lot of business owners will bring to their business what they’re strong at,” he says. “But when all they have is a hammer, everything they see is a nail, and any strength that’s overused becomes a weakness.”
Referring to Maslow’s hammer effect, Kent says to picture someone who is great at finance, but not so much at marketing. Or maybe amazing at sales, but not so much at systems and processes. It’s unrealistic to expect someone to be highly skilled in multiple areas, which is why it’s important to peel back the layers and figure out where things can improve. And the objective perspective of a Coach is essential to that kind of self-awareness.
Kent offers his clients a roadmap for all of the “fundamentals that nobody ever taught them when they started a business.” These fundamentals include things like self-organization, bringing your values to life, and understanding your brand’s purpose,
“Business owners are some of the most ambitious people in the world, and they have 48 different things that they want to do, and they stretch themselves across all 48,” says Kent. This can lead to burnout, overwhelm, and stress.
One of Kent’s effective tools to overcome this is what he calls a “time budget.”
“We basically identify all the cool stuff that you want in your life, and then we say, ‘how long is this going to take every week? How much time are you going to have to invest in all of these different things?’”
“We have 168 hours available to us. Inevitably, their ambition is 190 hours worth of stuff. There’s no way that’s possible. They’ve set themselves up to fail and they never even realized that was the case. So it’s no wonder that they’re frustrated and find themselves just completely stuck,” he says.
The exercise of mapping out all the activities and commitments one wants to pursue in a given week against the available 168 hours is eye-opening. It forces business owners to confront the limitations of time and reassess their ambitions realistically.
“An organization works like a machine in some ways. Every cog turns another cog, which turns a wheel, which makes the whole function work and if you can’t articulate that for yourself and your people, there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to make that mechanism function properly.”
Kent’s emphasis on helping clients align their actions with their priorities and values is crucial for fostering a sense of purpose and fulfillment. By streamlining one’s focus and allocating time intentionally, business owners can avoid burnout and achieve greater productivity and satisfaction.
Through his consultancy, Kent empowers leaders to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship with clarity, resilience, and purpose. When asked what a partnership with him would look like he says, “I will question your assumptions. I will hold you accountable. I will work with you to bring out your very best self.”
“Trying to do it all yourself isn’t functional. More often than not, the symptom that they’re looking at isn’t actually the root cause of their struggles. In my experience, 99% of the time our own blind spots are keeping us from seeing what’s actually going wrong with our business,” he concludes.
If you would like to learn more about how Dan Kent can help you elevate your business and personal life to the next level, visit Best Self Coaching today.
