It’s all about Revenue!
Nov 20, 2013

If you are a small business particularly just starting out, it is all about revenue. Your accountant will tell you (very wisely) to focus on profit and I’d agree. However when you are trying to grow and get some mass, revenue can be just as important. I’m not saying you should do business for a loss or just for the sake of getting revenue, but I am saying that growing your customer base and getting cash flow going is key.

Of course it also depends what the vision of your business is. If you plan to stay small then the importance of profit goes up. If you want to have a team and enjoy some leverage then the focus of your efforts should be on growth and acquiring revenue.

I make this point because I see many small business owners getting caught up in the day-to-day operations and not spending enough time and effort on sales and marketing.

Think of it this way, if you had enough revenue to hire people to do your operations, then you could spend your time in other areas. And this is the catch 22 for small business. How do you spend time on revenue generation when you also need to spend time on operations? This is not a simple answer and will depend greatly on the business and the owner’s skillsets. The short answer is to get the low skill activities off your plate and free up at least 30% of your time to invest in sales and marketing. Even if you take a short term hit in profits due to the extra expense of an admin person, the time gained will quickly generate far larger profits.

It's all about Revenue!
Nov 20, 2013

If you are a small business particularly just starting out, it is all about revenue. Your accountant will tell you (very wisely) to focus on profit and I’d agree. However when you are trying to grow and get some mass, revenue can be just as important. I’m not saying you should do business for a loss or just for the sake of getting revenue, but I am saying that growing your customer base and getting cash flow going is key.

Of course it also depends what the vision of your business is. If you plan to stay small then the importance of profit goes up. If you want to have a team and enjoy some leverage then the focus of your efforts should be on growth and acquiring revenue.

I make this point because I see many small business owners getting caught up in the day-to-day operations and not spending enough time and effort on sales and marketing.

Think of it this way, if you had enough revenue to hire people to do your operations, then you could spend your time in other areas. And this is the catch 22 for small business. How do you spend time on revenue generation when you also need to spend time on operations? This is not a simple answer and will depend greatly on the business and the owner’s skillsets. The short answer is to get the low skill activities off your plate and free up at least 30% of your time to invest in sales and marketing. Even if you take a short term hit in profits due to the extra expense of an admin person, the time gained will quickly generate far larger profits.

Does Diet affect Postive Mindset?
Oct 3, 2013

We hear so much about healthy eating and good food diet ... how about our other diets? Like Mental and Spiritual. These are vital human systems that also need feeding. The problem is, most of the time we feed them by default. I.e. they just get whatever life throws at them.

I say be as intentional with your Mental and Spiritual Diets as you are with your Physical Diet. Here's my shortlist of favourites for my Mental Diet. I'd love to hear yours.

  • The Art of Exceptional Living – Jim Rohn
  • Think and Grow Rich – Napolean Hill
  • How to be a Winner – Zig Ziglar
  • The Power of Positive Thinking – Normal Vincent Peal
  • YES Attitude – Jeffrey Gitomer
  • Success Principles - Jack Canfield
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

And my Spiritual Diet consists of:

  • clarity on my purpose
  • Making sure my activities are aligned with my purpose
  • Engaging regularly in activities I enjoy.
  • Meditation

What else do you do here?

The Top 5 requirements for Success

The Top 5 requirements for Success
Jul 24, 2013

Necessary Elements for Business Growth

Reflecting on the past 10 years of coaching, if I had to pick my top 5 requirements to achieve success, here's my list:

 

1. Time

Your ability to plan, prioritize, know your 80/20 (which 20% of your actions give you 80% of your results) and delegate will be key to your success. Only time spent doing valuable activities counts towards success. No-one achieved their goals by focusing on filing and bookkeeping (unless you are a bookkeeper 🙂 )

 

2. Energy

Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Hours worked is not the measure. It is the effectiveness of those hours. Are you alert, motivated, passionate and physically energized? Knowing your limits, how and when to recharge is a personal recipe. Know yours for best results from your hours invested.

 

3. Knowledge

You can only do what you know. And often what we ‘know’ is not always the right thing. Sometimes unlearning is the right first step. Keeping an open mind is crucial and avoid falling into the trap of thinking you know. You are more likely to do this the more successful you become. Continually invest time and money in growing your knowledge base. It is said that knowledge is power. Not quite. Knowledge is potential power. Maximize your potential power by growing your knowledge.

 

4. Confidence

To be gained through continuous small wins. Growing your knowledge; being very intentional in your self-talk; being selective who you hang around; these are all ways to grow your confidence. Growing confidence is a gradual process. Be consistent and intentional. The payoff - an increase in confidence has an exponential effect on your results.

 

5. Taking Action

You could excel in the first 4 points but if you don’t do anything then the results are zero. If you apply yourself in the base 4 then take massive action … results are guaranteed. Not always at first, but over the long run your path will be in the right direction. Remember the line to success is not straight. When things appear to be going sideways despite your work on all 5 points, remember to have faith in the principles shared here. They ALWAYS work in the long run.

 

What is your top 5?

The simplest form of leverage
Nov 28, 2012

Focus on What's Important For Your Business

When Clive wanted more time to be able to work on growing his business what he was really looking for was better leverage. That is ‘get more growth with less of his time invested’. He was currently under leveraged from a time perspective. I asked him this one question …

“What activities do you do now that take up more than 10% of your time that could be done by someone else?”

It took him less than 5 seconds to say “scheduling”. Next question …

“What would have to happen to get scheduling off your plate?”

In the 5 minutes following that question Clive had laid out a 5 step plan that was going to free up approximately 15hrs per week. In reality it took about 6 weeks to get 80% of the bugs ironed out of the delegation process and get others up to speed with training. The payoff - aside from the extra initial 15hrs - is a new mode of thinking that has allowed Clive to free up even more time by asking himself similar pattern breaking questions in other areas of the business.

And so it goes; the well-known, and largely underutilized, principle called the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle is one most of us probably should revisit. In this context the rule states:

80% of your results come from 20% of your activities.

The question is “how much of our time is spent on those 80% activities”. From what I’ve seen with most business owners, it is usually not enough. Despite my awareness of this I still catch myself doing things someone else can be doing at the expense of time invested in higher value activities.

To implement 80/20 thinking relative to your own time ask yourself this question …

“If I could only spend 20hrs per week working and my business had to achieve the goals I have in place, how would I do it?”

This question forces you into a new mode of thinking. Don’t expect the heavens to open on the first attempt at answering this question. If you stick with this question for 90-days and each day write down the answers that come to your mind, you’ll be amazed at the options available to you.

Achieving bigger goals requires bigger thinking …