In this solo episode of the Above the Business podcast, the host argues that excelling at a trade or industry (e.g., insurance, digital marketing, plumbing, farming, custom home building) does not automatically make someone a great business owner. He illustrates the point with personal anecdotes about his farmer father’s seed‑conditioning operation and a seasoned custom‑home builder, emphasizing that technical expertise and business ownership require distinct skill sets. The discussion references Michael Gerber’s The E‑Myth and the classic transition from technician to entrepreneur, reframing it as moving from loving a craft to mastering the "business architect" role. The host outlines the core competencies every owner must develop: entity structuring, financial management, team building and leadership, marketing and sales, and creating operating systems or blueprints. He explains how early‑stage businesses (under $500k) face intense hat‑wearing constraints, but as revenue grows (e.g., from $30‑35k/month to $50‑60k/month) owners can buy back time by delegating and focusing on their strengths. The episode concludes with a practical prompt for listeners to reflect on their own business‑owner skill strengths and gaps, encouraging them to identify which of the listed competencies they need to develop. A brief YouTube call‑to‑action ends the episode.
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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about this idea of becoming and stepping into the role of becoming a business owner. Look, I know many of you out there have different types of industries that you, you are in, and many of you specifically may be an insurance agency owner. So let me give that example. Let me share this kind of idea or philosophy with you. I think if you become a really good insurance agency, behavioral therapy company, digital marketing agency, pool company. If you become really good at, or even great at, that thing, that does not mean you by default become a great business owner. However, I believe, and one of the few hills I'm willing to die on, is that if you, in business anyway, If you become a great business owner, you will, you will by default become great at whatever it is that you do. Insurance agency owner, behavioral therapy company, pool company, digital marketing agency, coaching company, whatever that may be. I think if you learn the game of business first and step into the role of becoming a great business owner, you will by default become great at whatever it is that you do. I just don't think it works in reverse. I've shared this, that idea with a lot of different people over the years, and ones that have been in their industry for a while have shared, yeah, I've, I've become really good at the thing it is. I know how to do what we do very, very well, but it's learning the skills of business ownership is a totally different set of skills. Let's think about this. Depending on how you started in business. My dad is a farmer. I mean, my dad is a farmer, owns a farming company and a clean— what we call it a seed cleaning company, but it's actually seed conditioning. Clemmons and Hamner Seed. And he is fantastic and unbelievable at what it looks like to know when to plant soybeans, when to harvest the soybeans and the wheat and the corn and all of those different things over the years. His understanding of yields, his understanding of you know, uh, temperature and weather and weather patterns and prices in the commodity markets is unbelievable. But they're still— even with that of knowing how to be a farmer, it's still also he has to run a business, he has to manage financial statements, he has to hire team members to work for him. He has a big staff. He has to still coach those people. He has to give them specific job descriptions. He has to have leaders in the warehouse and in the farm and doing these things. It's not just about whether or not you can run a combine. He is running a multi-million dollar business that happens to be in farming. And I think that those two things, separating and understanding the differences of those— if he's just great at farming, that does not mean he's going to be great at being a business owner. Let's take another one. There's a company that I know very well, uh, that's a building company. The father has been in building for 30 years. He is absolutely fantastic on the job, job site, builds a wonderful home. His name's Keith. He builds an unbelievable home, has built custom homes his entire life. Now, he has been a very good business owner, but those skill sets— the reason I'm bringing that up is those skill sets specifically of being a business owner is different than the skill sets of knowing how to build a house. How to build a house and how to build a custom home is completely different than understanding what it looks like to actually run a construction or home building business. You may be a great plumber, you know how to do plumbing and electrical, and you may love those things, but then building a plumbing and electrical business, two totally different things. And this may sound familiar. This is the essence of what we learned from the book The E-Myth from Michael Gerber. We talked about from being the technician to stepping into being the entrepreneur. And I agree with him. I just think that I've tried to give it a little bit different of a sentence. I think he's totally right. Being good and knowing and loving baking apple pies is different than owning an apple pie baking shop. And so when you see that, getting yourself in an environment— listen, there's many of it. Coach P is one of them, okay? And there's many other programs out there that may be able to help you to become a really good, even great insurance agency owner, plumber, electrician, uh, digital marketing agency, whatever that may be. Heck, even for me, I'm owning a consultant— one of the— a consulting business, etc. Get in those environments, understand the specific details and the nuances in those industries. Clearly that's important. It's also important equally as much to then learn and understand the skills of business. Learning how to structure your entity and learning how to manage your financials, learning how to develop a team, build a team, develop them, retain them, compensate them well. Learning the— understanding how to market, how to make yourself, yourself known in the marketplace, learning how to convert those leads into becoming customers, learning how to structure an operating system so the thing isn't running on you all the time, learning how to build a blueprint for your business. There's so many different skills, and this is why business is so hard. It's so hard because it's the ultimate expression of a combination of so many skill sets. There's so many different things. Now, especially early on when you're, say, half a million or less, it's even more challenging because you have to wear so many of those hats. But as you grow, if you do it the right way, you're able to buy back more of your time and be able to slough off the things that you just aren't great at and other people are going to be much more excellent at, and be able to buy back your time so you can focus on the things that you're— that you love, that you're passionate about. But I want to be clear, it's also very difficult to do that when you're still, you know, less than half a million. That's not a bad thing, it's it just changes. I just got off the phone not long ago with somebody, you know, $30,000, $35,000 a month, and they have been building the business exactly the right way that they need to build that business. But to go from $30,000, $35,000 a month in revenue to getting them to do, you know, $50,000, $55,000, $60,000 a month, it's— it, it becomes life-changing stuff to do that. And the reality is, in those early stages, You need to do less. You need to do fewer things because as you grow, you get a little bigger, you can do more things because you have more resources at your disposal to be able to do so. My hope is today, simply put, there's no really— not tend to try to bring things from high level to eye level. And the only eye level thing I'm going to give today is just something for you to go and have some thinking time about. And that is to have thinking time about what are the business owner skills? What is the— if there's a hat of being the business owner, I did a podcast on this recently talking about the one hat that replaces all others, and that's the hat of the business architect specifically. But you think about that hat of when the being the business architect, the business owner, what are the skills that you feel that you uniquely carry? Today? And then number 2, where do you feel you are deficient? So my only eye-level thing for you in today's episode is to go in to do some thinking time on what are the business owner skills that I feel like I need to develop that I don't currently know. Maybe that is around leading and developing a team. Maybe that is around your financials. Maybe that's around growth, marketing, and sales, whatever that may be for you. Sit back and do some thinking time on what does it actually look like for me to step into the role of being the true business owner that my business needs for me to be? Because I believe if you become a great business owner, you by default will become great at whatever it is you specifically do. Hope this episode served you well. Till next time, lead well and go be great. And hey, if you're watching this on YouTube, would love for you to hit the like button, subscribe, and maybe share it with one other person. We got big plans for our YouTube channel going in 2026. Bye everyone.
