⚡ Get All Content for 20% Off ⚡

Treat Yourself as a Client for Startup Success Before you can build a start-up that takes over your industry, you need to treat yourself as your own best client.

By Allon Raiz

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur South Africa, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

Bigstock

In business, when you have a client, the relationship is formalised into a structured one where there are defined expectations and regular meetings. For example, if you are a consultancy and have a one-year contract to deliver services to a client, the relationship will be formalised, structured and possibly include monthly status meetings.

Some may be report-back meetings while others may be briefing meetings. Your client will receive a monthly invoice and there may be quarterly reviews of the work you have done. Your general mindset is one of service to the client because they are important and worthy of the effort.

Crudely speaking, most service-provider arrangements work in a similar way because the structured model works. In contrast, as entrepreneurs, our relationship with our own business is often far more chaotic or "organic' than formal. My contention is that it is also much less effective.

When I work with SMEs, one of the first things I do is encourage the entrepreneur to treat his or her own business as a client by formalising meetings, ensuring that there is a feedback loop and having a service-provider mindset.

By making these philosophical and structural changes, you will create a far more efficient and well-run business. There are four aspects to any business which, in my view, should be formalised.

1. Partners

It still astounds me how informal the meetings are between partners in SMEs, especially when they operate from the same office. There are no set times, no agendas and no outputs required.

The fact that you might sit in the same office or chat regularly is the problem because it's interpreted as proper communication while it's actually a very undisciplined and unstructured process. Casual chats do not ensure that all the requisite items or issues are being properly discussed and dealt with.

2. Staff

The often-given excuse for not holding weekly, biweekly or monthly meetings with team members at the same date and time is that the business is fluid and the entrepreneur needs to be responsive to their clients' urgent needs whenever these might occur. And so non-rhythmic meetings are occasionally inserted into the gaps in between the chaos.

The discipline that I try to imbed in the SMEs I work with is to hold rhythmic meetings at a certain time and day every week, month or quarter. Should there be a need to cancel this meeting for whatever reason, it should be rescheduled. The simple discipline of rescheduling and not cancelling allows for a compromise between the practical reality of an entrepreneur's life and the discipline required to build a sustainable business.

3. Agendas

Agendas are often seen by entrepreneurs as an icon of the structure of the corporate world. They smack of rigidity, stuffiness and boredom so they are often discarded and replaced with warm and fuzzy chats. In reality, in order for it to be an effective use of time, every meeting requires a structure, outline or agenda.

This can be a comprehensive agenda similar to that used by corporates or as simple as each person in the meeting talking about their three top-of-mind issues. What is important is that there is structure and outputs, otherwise the meeting's output is merely that it's nice to know. The output from a meeting with a formalised agenda is that it's nice to do.

4. Product review

When last did you, as an entrepreneur, formally ask yourself if your products are still relevant and effective in the market? One of the greatest oversights made by SMEs is not regularly reviewing the appropriateness of their existing products or services.

In a high-growth, chaotic environment that is attuned to constantly producing new products, existing products soon become the ugly stepchild, only getting attention when the client cancels the contract because your competitor has a faster, shinier and cheaper iteration of your product.

An incredibly important discipline in any business is the regular and formalised review of products and services. We resist structure as entrepreneurs and the price of that resistance is ineffective and inefficient businesses. By simply treating ourselves as we would our clients, we are able to imbed a level of structure to our businesses that will create a far more effective and enduring business.


Allon Raiz

CEO: Raizcorp

Allon Raiz is the CEO of Raizcorp, the only privately-owned small business ‘prosperator’ in Allon Raiz is the CEO of Raizcorp. In 2008, Raiz was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and in 2011 he was appointed for the first time as a member of the Global Agenda Council on Fostering Entrepreneurship. Following a series of entrepreneurship master classes delivered at Oxford University in April 2014, Raiz has been recognised as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
Leadership

If You Want to be Successful, Become a Better Speaker — Follow This 7-Step Process for Effective Speaking

Discover the transformative power of mastering presentation skills with this 7-step process.

Entrepreneurs

26 Of The Richest People in South Africa

Here are 26 of South Africa's richest people, but how did they achieve this level of wealth? Find out here.

Business News

The Most Unexpectedly Popular Side Hustle of the Decade Has Low Startup Costs and High Markups

A new report shows that vending machines are a popular investment — and the industry is set to grow up to $3 billion by 2031.

Starting a Business

She Started a Side Hustle While Working 2 Jobs as a Line Cook for $22 an Hour Combined — Now It's an 8-Figure Brand You've Probably Seen on TV

Ellen Bennett, founder of kitchenware brand Hedley & Bennett, had a big idea in 2012 — and the "willpower and chutzpah" to bring it to life.

Growth Strategies

7 South African Entrepreneurs Who Went From Nothing To Global Success

These homegrown businesses have grown from local companies to international brands. Here's how these South African entrepreneurs have successfully expanded their footprint beyond our borders.

Entrepreneurs

10 SA Entrepreneurs Who Built Their Businesses From Nothing

Remarkable stories about local entrepreneurs who built big businesses and well-known brands up from humble beginnings.