SUPPORT
GROWTH
How do I start to build my business?
The Owner’s Trap
Everyone has their own reasons for starting a business, but often FREEDOM is a fundamental part of the process. You want to have the freedom to work with people you like, to do things your own way and to have a chance at creating financial freedom. However, the reality is that only 4% of owner-managed businesses manage to achieve the freedom they set out to create. Many more get stuck in what is known as “The Owner’s Trap”.
You will know if you’ve fallen into the trap when:
Business slows down when you go on holiday or take time off
Customers come to you with their problems
Business growth has plateaued
Businesses that have fallen into this trap create stress for the owner and they also lack inherent value – no one will buy a business that is dependent on the owner.
To achieve true freedom, business building is necessary; to enable you to create a valuable business that you can sell (if you want to). You could also pass it down to other family members or step back from the business so that you are no longer needed to work every day.
Creating value in this way is the route to freedom and gives you more options. There are a number of things you need to do to build your business and achieve greater freedom – it all starts with having a plan.
Business Planning
What do you need to have in place – what funding, people, infrastructure, systems and leadership will you need to create business success?
How is your business running right now? Are customers being handled efficiently and receiving a good service. Be careful not to grow if you’re not already servicing your current customers in a controlled and streamlined way. Get the right systems in place first.
Our SmartRoom service is a good place to start
We help business owners of small and medium sized businesses to create value and scale their businesses through sound practical business support by providing insight, clarity and business support with a real determination to help you succeed.
You can access blogs like this and more besides through our free SmartRoom service here.
If you started your business with the goal of freedom, yet now you feel trapped in your business, then you’re in the right place. At BizSmart our team of specialist advisers have helped hundreds of business owners to create value in their businesses, putting them in a much stronger position.
If you want to know more about building value in your business then the best place to start is taking your Value Builder Assessment and you will then be given the option to arrange a follow-up call to discuss further.
How do you define your business success?
But clearly that doesn’t have to be the goal and it’s not the right path for everyone. It’s important to define what business success means for you.
It may be that once you have enough cash coming in to sustain the lifestyle you want and need then you can step back and look at other priorities. For example, are you spending enough time with your family? Do you have time for the hobbies you enjoy?
Clearly, business growth and building greater revenue and profits are important goals, but if you’re working long hours with no time for the fun things in life, plenty of people would argue that’s not business success.
Business tips: build a business you can sell
There is another goal you need to consider, and that’s the one of building a sellable business. With the right business strategy you can build a business that has value, and that ultimately you can sell – when or if the time is right.
Even if you have no plans right now to sell your business, there are good reasons to build your business with selling in mind.
Build a team around you
If you can build a management team, and put in place systems and processes for your staff to follow, this will allow you to escape your business when you need to.
Imagine how much more relaxed life could be if you weren’t essential to your business. You wouldn’t have to be in the office every day and your business could run without you being there.
Build a valuable business you can pass on to the next generation
Don’t saddle your children or relatives with a business that’s worthless, or that will sap their time and energy. Go for business success – build something of value – and leave a positive legacy for the next generation to enjoy.
BizSmart helps business owners of small and medium sized businesses to create value and scale their businesses through sound practical business support by providing insight, clarity and business support with a real determination to help you succeed.
You can access blogs like this and more besides through our free SmartRoom service here.
Can you step away from the business?
What would happen if you were ill or seriously injured? Would your business continue, or would it flounder? The truth is that if your company depends on your presence to operate, then you don’t have much of a business to sell.
Not only that, but you probably don’t have much opportunity to take time off and take a holiday. This isn’t a great route to business success and can ultimately lead to stress and burnout.
Get your enthusiasm back
Being able to step away from the business frees you up to think about business strategy and planning. This is often enjoyable work that can give you a renewed enthusiasm for running your business. It’s totally different from getting bogged down in the day-to-day business admin, which can and should be delegated. As the business owner bank reconciliations and minor customer issues will drag you down. Get them off your plate and your passion for running your business will get a big boost.
What are some small business tips for the UK business owner?
Small Business = less than 50 employees and turnover under £10 million
Medium Business = less than 250 employees and turnover under £50 million
At the start of 2016 there were a record 5.5 million private businesses in the UK. Of those 99.3% were small businesses and 99.9% were SMEs (statistics taken from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy).
There are two million more SMEs now, compared with the year 2000, and many of these new business owners may never have run a business before. So there are more and more business owners seeking help, advice and business tips.
BUSINESS TIPS
So what are the most important business tips to help you, the business owner, achieve business success.
Scaling your business
Being able to scale your business and achieve growth is key to creating a valuable business that you can later sell on. And scalability is easier when you keep it simple.
A lot of business owners end up diversifying, until they have such a broad list of products and services that it becomes difficult for anyone other than the business owner to run the business.
The three elements of scalability
This is one of the most important business tips and will ensure your business doesn’t become overly complicated and ultimately difficult to scale.
Choose a small set of products or services to sell and ensure that what you’re doing is teachable, valuable to your customers and repeatable.
That’s it! The secret to scaling is simply selling fewer options to many more people.
This gives you much greater potential for business growth.
Create a business plan
If you’re the captain of a ship but you have no destination in mind, no maps and charts, and no course set, what are the chances of you getting to where you want to go?
Creating a business plan will ensure you know where you’re heading so that you can put in place all the things you need to get there. It doesn’t have to be a fixed plan – your goals may change over time – but if you don’t have one then you’re sailing blind then business growth is likely to be haphazard.
Cash is king
Good cash flow is critical and the availability of cash (or the lack of it) can sink a business fast.
Take a look at the cash in your own business and brainstorm ways to improve the flow. Keep your mind open to new possibilities and see if there are other options. Just because something isn’t traditionally done in your industry, it doesn’t mean you can’t be the first.
Things that can help to improve cash flow include:
Ask your clients to pay you sooner. Always send a statement as soon as the payment day comes round, and consider sending a friendly reminder before the due date.
Invoice more often! There is no law that says you can only invoice once a month.
Consider offering less than 30 days terms. Give a “due by” date.
Encourage clients to pay upfront. Potentially you could offer them an incentive for upfront payment.
Set-up automated payments via GoCardless.
In summary, you need to speed up how people pay you, and prevent late payment before it happens.
Applying just some of these business tips will put you on a quicker path to business success.
BizSmart helps business owners of small and medium sized businesses to create value and scale their businesses through sound practical business support by providing insight, clarity and business support with a real determination to help you succeed.
You can access blogs like this and more besides through our free SmartRoom service here.
Why does business growth matter?
Scalability is key
Everyone has their own reasons for starting a business, but often FREEDOM is a fundamental part of the process. You want to have the freedom to work with people you like, to do things your own way and to have a chance at creating financial freedom. However, the reality is that only 4% of owner-managed businesses manage to achieve the freedom they set out to create. Many more get stuck in what is known as “The Owner’s Trap”.
The importance of scalability
Scaling your business makes it more likely that you will be able to build a business that has some inherent value beyond the time that you put into it.
If you currently run a business with a broad list of products and services then there may be changes you need to make to enable you to scale. A broad business is in danger of being dependent on the owner, as the owner is very probably the only person within the business who has all the knowledge required to provide such breadth of service or product in a successful manner.
A business selling fewer products or services to a greater number of clients will be a much better candidate for scaling. By selecting a small number of products or services that fit with the Trifecta of Scalability, scaling your business will become easier. Namely, what you do needs to be teachable, valuable and repeatable.
At BizSmart we work with SMEs, small business owners and micro-businesses to help them grow in a sustainable way. One of the pitfalls of small business growth is that if growth happens too quickly and the business can’t keep up then service levels are affected, having a negative impact on the business. Hence we work with businesses to create SUSTAINABLE growth.
How BizSmart can help
Our team of experienced business growth advisers work with businesses both one on one and via our online resources to inspire and support business growth.
BizSmart helps business owners of small and medium sized businesses to create value and scale their businesses through sound practical business support by providing insight, clarity and business support with a real determination to help you succeed. You can access blogs like this and more besides through our free SmartRoom service here.
Building a business for value gives you many more options as you are creating a business that has a value separate from you as a business owner. This gives you greater freedom to take time out, to retire or to sell the business in the future.
If you are keen to understand more about business growth and how you can go about building value in your business then click here to find out more about our Value BuilderTM programme.
How do I find support for my small business?
When you’re looking for business support in the UK, it can be difficult to know where to start. There are many different online forums and business groups you can join, and it’s not always easy to know where you should go for genuine support in business.
When you’re working with someone who can act as your sounding board and help you achieve business growth, it makes sense if they have already run a business themselves and know what they’re doing. Ideally you want them to be experienced and able to pass on the knowledge they’ve acquired over several years of being in business. If you’re a relatively new business, there’s often no benefit to you taking advice from another new business owner.
How BizSmart can help
At BizSmart we run a series of SmartBoards, where hand-selected business owners come together in a group to offer each other business support. Conducted online via conference calls, and often with at least one introductory meeting face to face, these groups are incredibly beneficial in helping our clients to achieve business success.
Each group is facilitated by one of our experienced business advisors, who can guide and steer the SmartBoard members in the right direction. As well as getting answers and advice on your own challenges, real benefits also come from hearing about what your fellow SmartBoard members are going through in their businesses.
You will always be able to take something of value from the experiences of other business owners and they’ll share their hard-earned business tips with you to put you on the path to business growth.
Feedback
BizSmart Select Member Andy Phillips has this to say about the mastermind group he’s in.
“From the onset, the group showed us how, as business owners, we have a tendency to procrastinate certain jobs just because we can. When we have someone else to answer to other than ourselves, our priorities shift and we make it our duty to get the task done, get it done well and get it done on time. There are no excuses that “the dog ate your homework” in our Mastermind group; each of us takes pride in seeing the growth of our own and our teammates’ businesses. It’s our fundamental focus on “getting stuff done” that makes the group so successful.”
Joining one of our SmartBoards gives you the benefits of advice, input, accountability and someone to bounce ideas off. Picture the scene when you’re next facing a challenge in your business, or you need help to make a critical decision. You will have several fellow business owners to help you, whose advice you value and trust.
They’ll quiz you over the situation, push you to think through the best route for your business and help you find a positive way forward. They’ll also check up on you later to see that you took the actions you said you would. How different would your business be in 12 months if you had a SmartBoard in your life?
Click here to find out more about our SmartBoard service or get started straight away with our free SmartChecker report.
How can I plan my business for success?
For a start, business plans change. Nobody can see into the future and your business will almost certainly need to evolve, no matter how thorough your initial planning is.
You may start out with one business model and then as your market changes and shifts, you may need an entirely different plan.
Is there an effective way to craft a business plan for a small business?
When you’re working on your business – looking for business growth – if you approach your plans in a systematic way then this can increase your chances of business success.
Looking at your business model
Have you got the right business model in place? If you’re running around like a busy fool and feeling like you can never get ahead, then it’s pretty likely there are things you can change in your business to give you greater control over your time and stress levels.
Areas that small business owners question, and that often have potential for improvement, include:
Pricing – am I charging the right amount?
The offer – have I got this right?
Are my products and services right – should there be more or fewer on offer?
Who will make the best customers and what’s the best way to reach them?
Should I bill upfront or offer payment terms?
How can I keep customers satisfied so they are keen to buy from me again?
How can I scale my business?
The best business plans are backed up by support. Achieving business success alone is hard, and having people around you who can give you business tips and encourage you to grow your business is crucial.
How BizSmart can help
At BizSmart we run a series of SmartBoards, where small groups of business owners offer and receive support from each other. With most meetings held online, these groups are less time consuming than an in-person group.
An experienced business advisor facilitates each group, encouraging business owners as they work towards greater business success.
Not only will you get help and advice with your own business but you’ll learn from your fellow SmartBoard members. Everyone who joins a mastermind group ends up being surprised by how much they benefit from hearing about other people’s business challenges.
Someone in the room will usually have been through your current challenge and with their business tips and advice you’ll benefit from their experience.
The benefits
You’ll also appreciate the accountability of the group. No-one wants to be the person who turns up not having done the actions they committed to last month, so being part of a SmartBoard will force you to take action and keep moving forward in your business.
As well as the benefits of being part of a group, every SmartBoard member goes through a strategic business planning exercise to develop a three-year plan and identify their critical paths and actions for the next 12 months.
How much could you change in your business in the space of a year if you had a SmartBoard in your life?
Click here to find out more about our SmartBoard service or get started straight away with our free SmartChecker report.
Who needs a business coach?
Perhaps you started your business because you have a passion for what you do and you wanted to share it? Or you thought you could do a better job than your employer? Or maybe you spotted a product you could really get behind, or an opportunity that was too good to miss?
But now you’re a few years in and the reality is that running a business is hard going. You have too much to do and not enough time, and you’re overwhelmed by all the different things you need to work on to keep your business running smoothly.
It’s not possible to keep up with everything you need to be doing to achieve the business growth you’re capable of.
Business Support
So what’s the answer? The truth is that it ISN’T possible to do all this alone. You need business support to keep things on track. Even if you were an expert at every element of running a business, you couldn’t possibly find the time to do it all – the financial stuff, marketing, employment law – there’s just too much of it.
You’ve probably already realised this and outsourced some of the above. And if you haven’t then you should. Most business owners will pay someone else to design and build their website. And having an accountant is an essential service that most business owners buy in. But what about looking for an online business mentor? Someone who can help you with business planning and put you on the path to success?
Even if you think you’ve read all the right business books and you know what you SHOULD be doing, it still helps to have someone outside of the business who you can bounce ideas off. Ideally, this is someone who can hold you accountable and make sure you stick to your plans.
If your business isn’t where you’d like it to be, and you don’t see that changing anytime soon, then a business mentor or business coach is a no-brainer for you. Where would you like your business to be in 12 months? Will you get there on your own, or could having someone else in your corner be transformational for you and your business?
What help is at hand?
It’s quite possible that you already know what you need to do. Maybe you’ve read tonnes of business books and you think you know what you need to do next, but you’re just not getting on with it. If that’s the case, you may be wondering what good an outside influence will do.
But even if you know what to do, sometimes you need a bit of a kick. You might hear loads of success stories where it looks like an entrepreneur has gone from nought to sixty on their own, but the truth is you never know who’s helping them out in the background – they’re probably working with a business mentor.
A business coach or mentor will guide you and make sure that rather than being distracted by gimmicks or the latest marketing trend, you’ll actually get things done in the right order and in the right way to put your business on a solid upward trajectory.
You can start right now by spending ten minutes on our BizSmart Checker.
This will help you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses, so you can see where help and guidance is needed. Invest just ten minutes now to put yourself and your business on the right track. Click here to start using the BizSmart Checker now.
Why did you start your business?
After a few months or years of running a business, the reality of the challenges business owners can face will start to hit. It is hard work running a business and without the right support it can be extremely challenging to create business success.
There are so many different balls to juggle, you can begin to feel overwhelmed and like it’s impossible to keep up with everything that needs to be done. Spending your days on running the business and serving clients can mean that you never find the time to work on business growth.
What’s the plan?
Maybe you have a business plan to enable your business to grow, but you don’t have time to follow it. This is the reality for many business owners.
Before you start a business, no one informs you that it actually isn’t possible to do everything on your own. Even if you had an MBA, accountancy and legal qualifications, and a degree in marketing, you still wouldn’t have enough hours in the day to run the business successfully on your own.
Most business owners wake up to this fact at some point, and begin to outsource some of the work of running a successful business. They might hire an accountant, or use a graphic designer to create logos and marketing materials. But when it comes to business growth, the importance of a business growth coach is sometimes overlooked. However, often this is the key to the business success you crave.
It may be that you have a lot of knowledge already. Perhaps you’ve read The E Myth and Think and Grow Rich, and you know what you’re doing. But are you implementing what you know. What if a lack of support from outside your business is holding you back?
Where will you be in one year?
If you carry on as you are, will you be where you want to be in 12 months? Do you have a clear vision of where you want to get to?
Working with a business growth specialist will bring an experienced pair of hands into your business – someone who can give you impartial support and advice and can come in with an outside perspective to help you see what changes you need to make.
The first step towards working with an experienced business specialist is to spend five to ten minutes answering the questions on our BizSmart Checker. This will help to highlight some of your business strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to understand where you might need some support.
Invest five minutes of your time today and begin your journey on the path to success. Click here to start using the BizSmart Checker now.
What are some small business tools for business growth?
Software and Apps
When you’re putting in place systems and processes in your business, software and applications can make your business life a lot easier. Using an accounts package that automatically syncs with your bank account will save you and your staff a lot of time and allow you to produce automatic reports as often as you need.
Other useful apps to think about are those that help with payroll, customer databases or CRMs, email marketing services and for remote staff and teams, time tracking or project management and communications apps can be beneficial.
Employing staff
Employing your first member of staff can feel like a big leap, as can growing your team, but the upfront expense is usually far outweighed by the benefits of employing a valuable member of staff who can take some of the more menial tasks off your hands. Or it may be that they’re able to take on things that you just don’t want to do, or that don’t suit your personality or skills.
Outsourcing
Most business owners will pay an accountant rather than attempt to deal with the business’s tax affairs themselves, but there are other things it makes sense to outsource too. Using an HR consultant will ensure you are following the correct procedures with your employees, and working with a business coach or advisor, will often pay for itself, as you’re able to pursue business growth in a more strategic and systematic way, leading to greater business success.
Building a sustainable business
A business coach will help you with business strategy, so that you build a sustainable business. For example, it would be no good to just work on your sales and marketing, and bring in more leads, if you didn’t have the systems and processes in place to handle the extra workload. It’s important to have a well-structured business plan, to avoid the challenges that can occur if you work on things in the wrong order.
What BizSmart clients say:
“BizSmart is tailored completely to my business needs and shows me how I can grow as a business. I can already see a plan forming for the future.”
Alex Sharp, Alex Sharp Photography
“BizSmart has given us independent eyes that are able to see the business from the outside. There’s a clear and methodical approach and it’s well structured.”
RachidTaibi, The Upright One
Effective business planning will help to ensure you grow your business in the right way for long-term growth and value rather than short-term profit.
To see how your business measures up right now you can use one of our business tools to get your Value Builder Score. Simply answer a few questions here. It only takes around 13 minutes to complete and gives you a chance to find out where your business is in terms of value.
What’s your business exit strategy?
Exit strategy for small businesses
There are a number of reasons for developing an exit strategy:
1. Protection: Having an exit strategy for a business protects the value of the business you have built and can also protect you from unforeseen events and changes in the marketplace
2. Business Success: An exit plan for business means you will naturally focus on elements that will make your business stronger
3. Stamina: By putting in place exit planning you should be able to escape the daily grind and stay enthusiastic and motivated to run your business for longer
4. Value: Planning for your business exit should help you to release more value from your business when you do sell.
At the moment you may have no plans to exit your small business, but ultimately you may want to retire or pass control of the business on to a family member.
You may go through life events such as illness or divorce that force you to sell the business, and there’s no planning for these kinds of things, so it’s a good idea to already have an exit strategy for your business in place.
In an ideal world you’d have thought about your exit plan before you even start your business, and this would influence the kind of business you create. But if your business is already going then it’s something to start work on sooner rather than later.
What will someone pay for your business?
This is very much influenced by the way in which your business is set up and the business growth potential. If you are pivotal to the business then this will impact on the price you can get for your business, so if this is the case then it’s one of the elements you will need to change.
The changes most business owners need to make to create a successful exit plan take time – these are not things that can be put in place overnight. Hence, it is good to start planning your exit well in advance and ideally several years before you want to exit.
You can get your own Value Builder Score, and see how you compare on the eight key drivers of company value, by taking our 13-minute survey here.
If you’d like to know more about putting your own Exit Plan together then you might like our online course ‘How to Exit Your Business on YOUR terms’
Why you should be adding value to your business?
How to put a value on a business
Our BizSmart Value Builder Score questionnaire is the first step in looking at the value in your business – you can answer the questions here. Analysing the results from more than 18,000 businesses that have completed the Value Builder, we found that businesses that had received an offer were offered, on average, 3.5 times their gross profit.
Business growth adds value to your business
However, when we looked at the companies who had grown at a rate of 20% or higher, they had been offered 4.3 times their gross profit i.e. 20 percent more than slower growing businesses.
Adding value to your business via a niche
What was striking though, was that the multiple shot up even higher when we looked at those companies who dominate their niche with a unique product or service. Those businesses with a unique position in the market were offered on average 5.4 times their gross profit, or approximately 50 percent more than the average business and 20 percent more than the fastest growth businesses.
What NOT to do
Going after the wrong kind of business growth – by offering a wider range of products and services – doesn’t result in you adding value to your business. It’s a simple way to grow and you are less reliant on finding new customers, but unfortunately it makes your business more complex. This means that someone looking to acquire your business will find it more challenging to replicate what you offer your customers.
In this scenario, where you have a wide range of products and services, a large company looking to acquire you will place little value on the revenue you’re earning as a result of products and services that they already offer themselves.
Where can you get small business advice?
Accessing a business adviser
It also makes sense to look at working with a business adviser. Most business owners wouldn’t hesitate to pay an accountant, or to outsource the design of their website, but many do resist investing in small business advice.
But the reality is that working with a business adviser who can guide you, push you, encourage you and hold you accountable will mean you can achieve much more than would be possible alone.
It’s the “Two heads are better than one scenario” coupled with the fact that an experienced business adviser will be able to help you avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that are a hazard for many business owners.
How BizSmart can help
At BizSmart each of our core business advisors runs a SmartBoard – this is a small group of hand-selected business owners who meet online each month to guide and support each other.
By hosting SmartBoards online, this cuts out travel time and makes this a really efficient way for you to get small business help.
A highly experienced small business advisor runs each group, to facilitate the business owners in the group in sharing their individual challenges and then giving and receiving advice from the group.
The reality is that many challenges in business are universal so not only do you benefit from small business help with your own issues, but you will learn from the issues raised by your fellow SmartBoard members.
The benefits
You’ll also benefit from group accountability. Each month you’ll commit to several actions, and your fellow members will keep you accountable to ensure you stay on track and keep moving forwards.
As well as the benefits of being part of a group, every SmartBoard member goes through a strategic business planning exercise to develop a three-year plan and identify their critical paths and actions for the next 12 months.
How much could you change in your business in the space of a year if you had a SmartBoard in your life?
Click here to find out more about our SmartBoard service or get started straight away with our free SmartChecker report.
How do you make a scalable business model?
What is a scalable business?
When you have scalability in business, this means you are capable of increasing your revenue without increasing your operating costs at the same rate. Your profits go up faster than your costs.
Businesses without a scalable business model can grow but won’t scale well. A good example of this is a firm of solicitors. Every time they take on additional clients, they increase their staff workload until the point where they need to employ another solicitor, and perhaps eventually another legal executive or administrator. Costs are increasing at the same rate revenue increases, making scaling a challenge.
Business scalability model
If you get specialist business advisors involved in the early days of your business, assisting you in writing the business plan, then this will make it easier for you to ensure your business is scalable.
Elements such as automation can make it easier to scale a business, and it’s important to outsource the right things so that you retain control over the core elements of your business as you grow.
Is my business scalable?
Would your business work as a franchise? If the answer to that question is “No” then your business probably isn’t scalable.
Getting the right team in place for business scalability
There’s a method you can use to ensure you have the right people in place in your company to help you on your path to building a sustainable, scalable business that brings you business success.
There are certain functions in every business, so you need to start by listing out all the functions of your business. What has to happen and who needs to do it?
It may be that right now in your business, the answer to “Who needs to do it?” is you, but writing out the functions will enable you to identify which functions you want to get off your plate first. Then you will have a business strategy for building a great team around you.
What to ask yourself
Essentially, you are asking yourself the question, “What do I want to delegate next?”
If you do already have staff then you need to list out the functions and add a name to each one depending on who is accountable for that function. Then you can review this to see if one person is responsible for too much, or if efforts are being duplicated. You’ll also have a clearer picture of whether the right people are working on the right things.
A business coach or mentor can help with this process and ensure you are going through things in the right order to put you on the path to business scalability.
This will help you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses, so you can see where help and guidance is needed. Invest just ten minutes now to put yourself and your business on the right track. Click here to start using the BizSmart Checker now.
How can you achieve business success?
The challenge of running a business
Running a business isn’t easy, and there’s a business lifecycle you need to be aware of, running from conception through to birth, infant, teenager and adult. Most businesses struggle to get out of the infant or troublesome teenager phase. They don’t make the leap that’s required to create a mature business that has made it to adulthood.
It may be that some things in your business are working well, but that other elements are getting on top of you. If your business is taking over your life and you’re only just keeping your head above water, then you might be forgiven for thinking, “is this really worth it?”
Having a business strategy is vital to keep your business on track and reach your business goals.
So why is it that some businesses (approximately 4 in 100) mature whereas others don’t. Are there some business tips that can get your business to the next stage?
Of course, a few tips and tricks aren’t going to change your business overnight – I’m sure you know that. So what CAN you do?
Implement a strategy
Firstly, you need a small business strategy.
Imagine you’re about to hop in your car to go on holiday – you need to know where you’re going so that you can plan your route and ensure that you reach your destination. If you don’t, you just won’t get there.
The same goes for your business – you need to know where you’re going so that you can plan how to get there. When you work with BizSmart we always start with figuring out where you are heading. You can’t possibly focus on the right things in your business if you don’t know where you want to get to.
Looking at your core values will help you regain a sense of direction.
What are your drivers? What do you stand for?
Once you have a handful of core values that feel authentic and sit well with you and your team, it’s time to look at why you do what you do. What is the core purpose of your business? What does your business do – what service or product do you deliver and what benefit does this offer to your customers?
Once you’ve clarified this, ask yourself why you do this.
What’s the real reason you’re in business?
These can be challenging questions but putting in the effort at this stage will make it much easier to develop a sound business strategy that helps you to grow your business.
Where to begin
A simple place to start is by investing five or ten minutes of your time in answering the questions on our BizSmart Checker. We’ll help you to discover your business strengths and weaknesses, so you can figure out where you need some help and guidance.
Invest ten minutes now and you’ll be well on the way to developing a business strategy. Click here to start using the BizSmart Checker now.
BizSmart helps business owners of small and medium sized businesses to create value and scale their businesses through sound practical business support by providing insight, clarity and business support with a real determination to help you succeed.
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