The One Thing

Music Lesson Business Academy

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