The best advice I or anyone could give when it comes to running a business is to take it personally. Seriously, no one is more responsible for the success or failure of a business than its owner. From the moment the open sign lights up for the first time the performance of that business is a direct reflection on the owner.

For you to think that customers blame the frontline employees or their supervisors is an open invitation for the customers to do business with your competition. You need to take t they say personally. As difficult as it is to build and maintain a good reputation, it is even more so to change a tarnished reputation.

It is impossible to directly oversee each and every cog that turns a machine. The main objective is to ensure that all those cogs spin and they all work in tandem with each other. This is part of training the right people the right way and holding them to your standards of operation.                                                        

                                                Bulldog Rules for Business

                                    # 3 - Hire the right people to do the job                                 

                               # 4 - Train and then keep training your employees

For analogy sake let’s say the cogs of a business are the different aspects that run it.

• Marketing 
• Customer Service  
• Image  
• Training  
• Human Resources  
• Quality of Products and Services 

Place these and several other key elements of business together and you get profit right? Well, not necessarily. I’ve worked with businesses where you could almost hear the gears grinding and you can see that the business is breaking down. The only person taking it personally at that point is the customer, which is not enough to grease the gears and get things moving.  

One of the most inefficient uses of time is possessed by the Micro-Manager. Taking it personally is exactly what the Micro-Manager does - just in excess. If you can fault the micro-manager for anything it won’t be for lack of trying. So I warn anyone who thinks that the only way to get something done right is to do it themselves - it won’t work for long.

If someone would only inoculate everyone within an organization with a little personal pride and business ethics there would be a bottom line worth looking at. That is your job as the owner. Who better than the person with the most to gain and the most to lose? Keep one thing in mind; there are more pleasant things that roll down hill. Take every aspect of your business personally and roll something useful down that hill.