Owning and managing a company - by Rick Kaplan

Most people think that owning and running a company is very difficult, and they are right. Running a company that is very successful has many factors and challenges. I have owned a couple of different companies and made many mistakes, and it is all part of the learning curve. As long as you are willing to ask questions, listen, learn and make adjustments it helps to eliminate some of your mistakes and challenges.

Most business owners start small and scale to medium to large companies. One of the major factors in being successful can be your product or service. If you have a product or service in high demand and have built a great brand and reputation you are on your way to success, that’s the easy part.  Second is having the right staffing and management; this is usually one factor in companies not succeeding. Most business owners have strong qualities in certain aspects of their business but need to recognize their weaknesses. If you know your product or service well but don’t know how to manage employees you need to recognize that. Hire the right team to make sure that you pick strong management to run the parts of your company that you have weaknesses in and learn from them. Third, and this is usually the biggest issue, finances, good bank relationships, healthy revenues and overhead costs.

Owning and managing a company is like a circus, you need to know how to juggle, balance, be a fortune teller and my favorite, a ring leader. People depend on you as their company leader to make sure you do the right thing to keep the company going forward, and you depend on the right people you put in place to make that happen. I think that’s why the team has become an important part of the business game.  Running a company as a leader can be very rewarding, as an owner or senior management, both will find success in the right structure.     

Rick Kaplan is the event coordinator at the New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.