INDIE GARAGE welcomes veteran aftermarket trainer and consultant  Murray Voth as its newest content partner. INDIE GARAGE readers can look forward to regular contributions by one of Canada’s best-known and most-respected trainers. Welcome Murray!

By Murray Voth, RPM Training

Out family had great fun watching the World Cup Soccer tournament this season. We saw as many of the games as we could, and while we watched there was one statistic that caught my eye. Even though one team usually had possession of the ball for a higher percentage of the game, that didn’t necessarily guarantee a win. It led us to coin a phrase: “possession without a purpose,” which basically means that it’s one thing to dipsy-doodle with the ball the whole game, but putting the ball in the net is the only thing that actually wins.

Murray Voth

All too often, we business owners tend to lose sight of the purpose of our business. Too many shop owners go to work in the morning and their only goal is to survive the day. I remember what that feels like: you lose hope, you don’t know what else to do, and you have too much invested – in time and money – to let it all go. You have “possession” of the business, but it does not have a purpose. Your goals are not being met.

As my opening column for Indie Garage, I’ll start with a small description of the purpose of a business, and then build on these concepts in upcoming columns. The goal is to help you get back to what drove you to start your business in the first place – and make coming to work in the morning about much more than just survival.

The purpose of a business is to meet or exceed the needs of the three stakeholders in a business: customers, employees, and shareholders. Keeping their needs and expectations in balance is what keeps a business growing successfully. Over and above that, the broader purpose of a business comprises the reason, the focus, and the results of that business.

To start and maintain the cycle of the purpose of a business, the primary purpose of a business, the reason it exists, is to meet or exceed the needs of its customers.

Once the cycle has begun, the most important focus of a business is to take care of its employees.

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” Richard Branson

The result of the purpose of a business cycle is that the needs of shareholders are met. The shareholders need a return on the money and time they invested in the business, and the risk they have taken. One could legitimately say that the purpose of a business is to create wealth; but I would say that wealth is the result of fulfilling the purpose of the business.

We get back in direct proportion to what we put out. Business is responsible for learning how to deliver tangible (and intangible) results to the three stakeholders. The three stakeholders then give back to the business. The business is ultimately responsible for the results produced and the benefits received.

Give some thought to the purpose of your business. In later columns we will expand on these concepts and present some tools that will help you succeed in making the changes – desired as well as needed – to help your business fulfill the purpose you envisioned at the very beginning.

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Murray Voth and RPM Training can be reached at https://rpmtraining.net/