Harness the double wealth power of your business
Building a business is an effective way to create wealth as it offers two ways to create wealth:
1. Providing an income to you as owner. Income is the profit your business earns from its day to day operations after everyone has been paid (including you, for your work in the business).
2. Increasing the value of your business. Value is the price someone would pay, to buy your business.
Profit and value are related. Value is largely, but not solely, influenced by profit. Here are two strategies to increase the profit and value of your business.
Strategy 1: Establish yourself as a profitable business
Here are some basic guidelines:
1. Establish a real profit
In your sale price, ...
How to make discussing performance easier
John Petry, a participant on one of our training courses, gave us this great idea and has generously allowed us to pass it on ever since.
Every Friday, John gives out the 'Chocolate Fish Award'
A chocolate fish is given for the most outstanding act by an employee during the week.
Outstandingly good, or outstandingly bad.
The Chocolate Fish Award is usually fun and has some serious benefits, it:
recognises achievement regularly and positively
makes it OK to acknowledge mistakes, and encourages "what to do next time?" thinking
provides staff with a neutral name and way to discuss performance - “oh you must be aiming for this week's chocolate fish" Or "what a doozey! That will be this week's winner for ...
Businesses follow a common path of development as they grow.
Each stage of business development has its own unique challenges to overcome and requires different management skills.
There are three main stages of business development:
Startup
Adolescence
Maturity
You are in Tips and Tools
How to identify your stage of business development
The above sales turnover and staff numbers are just a guide. We have worked with businesses with 120 staff, that are still at the adolescent stage.
The best way to know which stage your business is at, is to review the below challenges, and see which group you identify with the most.
Start-up Challenges:
Surviving!
Finding sales opportunities
Converting sales opportunities
Managing cashflow
Juggling many hats
Appearing professional
Dealing with the admin/paperwork
Overwhelm! Everything is new
Adolescent ...
There is a lot of hoo-ha around 'strategy'. But is strategy really that complex to understand?
Simply put, 'strategy' is how, in general, you intend to achieve your goals.
As there are many ways you could achieve your goals, it is important to clarify how you specifically plan to achieve your goals. That is, what will your strategy be?
Defining your 'how' facilitates engagement, efficiency and differentiation from your competitors.
Strategy is HOW, in general, you intend to achieve your goals.
Strategy requires deciding what you will and won't do
"Business strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities." (Michael E. Porter)
In business, your strategy defines how you uniquely intend to achieve your goals which differentiates you from your competitors.
To have clear strategies ...
Take the Test - how clear is your strategy?
It is essential to have a clear strategy that everyone in your business understands and can contribute to.
Take this simple test to see how clear your business strategies are:
A) Ask your staff these 4 questions:
What are the 4-6 things that make us different from our competitors?
As a business what key things do we really excel at?
What are our main current business priorities?
In your job what do you think are the most important things you need to achieve?
Would your strategies get an A+ for Clarity?
B) Review their answers.
How consistent are they? Can you see any themes running through the answers? Do the themes resonate with your core business strategies?
C) ...
There is only one thing more important than strategy, but unfortunately it is often overlooked, or even forgotten. So what is more important than strategy?
The results your strategy is designed to deliver.
We have seen organisations become so focused on implementing their strategy that they forget about the original results their strategy was designed to deliver.
We call this being 'activity-based', rather than 'results-baseed'.
'Activity based' is where the focus is on planning and completing activities.
'Results-based' is where the focus is on achieving results and activities are assessed in the context of what impact they make on the results.
Results are what matter. Results are what your strategies are designed to deliver.
Avoid getting sidetracked by all the activity
It is easy to get side-tracked by activity. Activity is the ...
