I came across this quote by Seth Godin in “Small is the new Big”
“Too many companies believe that their owners would have them make schlock and alienate their customers for the sake of profit…”
Odd really… As human beings, we are prepared to make and do stuff that just isn’t all that remarkable, but when we are the customer ourselves, we expect even the item we’ve bought at a knock down bargain price to be perfect in all respects. Why do we allow ourselves to be tempted to think that “close enough is good enough”?
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Do you get the feeling, wandering around the shops in this pre-Christmas week and seeing all the bulging shopping bags, that plenty of people still think ‘bigger is better’?
One person who doesn’t is Bo Burlingham (on today’s reading list). Burlingham has this great line, “Resisting the pressure to grow is one of the hardest challenges any successful business owner can face.”
Interesting idea hey, when it is such an accepted axiom that growth in business is always good, and the faster the growth the better.
Funny thing is, there is absolutely nothing that says growing is better than not growing. In fact plenty of otherwise successful businesses have gone broke or the owner has lost control simply because the company grew too quickly.
You can build a remarkable business by not growing past a certain point and just getting better and better instead.
So bigger isn’t better; better is better.
]]>Mike says, “Owning a business is not about working your arse off for the sake of trying to squeeze out a living. It is not about making tons of money at the expense of losing tons of life. It is about maximising life, bettering your life and the life of others, which ironically fattens your purse.”
This makes sense to me; you too? I recently heard an American marketing guru say it another way, “The purpose of business is not to make money; that would be like saying that the purpose of a human being is to eat food.”
Sure we need food or we can’t fulfil our purpose, and in the same way a business needs to make money otherwise we can’t deliver on the purpose of the business.
But (and this is the clincher) the purpose of the busines is something much more important than making money, and it’s different for every business on the planet.
So from beer o’clock and toilet paper we actually ended with a pretty profound thought. Cool, huh!
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The system works! Rebecca gets systemised… Truth 8
Read on to find out how Rebecca learnt that systemisation = less effort + more profit.
Once upon a time… a long, long time ago in a country not unlike Australia… Rebecca ran a consulting business.
She had a team of six consultants and two administrative assistants.
While all her stafff contributed in their own ways, Rebecca was finding there was no consistency across their output. Some jobs would be completed with great results while others were done haphazardly with outcomes all over the place.
Rebecca was spending hours fixing the other consultants’ work and making sure the admin assistants were on track. She was becoming increasingly worried about the quality of the business’s output and concerned her clients might get fed up and leave her.
Rebecca felt she could never relax because she needed to check up on everyone and everything all the time.
She wondered, “How can I make sure everyone in the team is producing consistently good work?”
Rebecca was going nuts.
The Bootcamp
Working in The Bootcamp with me, Rebecca came to understand that she needed an overarching system so that everyone knew what they needed to do.
The biggest lesson Rebecca learnt was that once you put a system in place you don’t have to think about it again (well, not immediately at least!). Good systems free you up to get on with the real work of your business.
In the Bootcamp Rebecca and I talked about the principle of, “Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” She started tracking different jobs and looking at what was and what wasn’t working, and found that:
Result 1: Successful jobs always had more time in the briefing stages than jobs that were rushed in.
Result 2: Successful jobs always had a simple document register attached to the filing system for the project.
Result 3: Successful jobs had one person who was responsible for keeping the documents register up-to-date and the filing system organised.
From these findings, Rebecca was able to put in place the following actions:
Action 1: She created a series of minimum benchmarks for the briefing stage of any project, no matter how rushed the client was.
Action 2: She assigned one person as the responsible officer for the filing system and document register for each job.
Action 3: She implemented a monthly ‘systems meeting’ where she would go through each job with the responsible people and check on the briefing stages, the filing systems and the document registers.
The difference in just a few months was remarkable. Peace and calm reigned in Rebecca’s office because everyone knew what they should be doing, how they should be doing it and when they needed to have it done by. Happily Rebecca can now take a day off here and there to focus on her favourite hobby… photography.
Systemisation really does mean less effort and more profit.
Ask yourself… Where will you find the courage to build a remarkable business?
So you’ve got a great product or an awesome service but where are all your customers? Read on to see how Mark found his customers and sent his sales rocketing.
Once upon a time… a long, long time ago in a country not
unlike Australia…
Mark was a graphic designer.
In fact he was a fantastic graphic designer. He had put together a small team of other passionate and inspired designers and together they created beautiful, eye-catching, ground-breaking designs. Yet despite his and his team’s talent, the work coming in was sporadic and the business was only just making ends meet.
Sometimes potential clients made enquiries about design work, and sometimes leads just walked in the door. Every now and then Mark made a few phone calls and sent out some emails prospecting for work, but this was only occasionally and usually just when the need for work was greatest.
The result of all this meant that sales were haphazard and work fluctuated wildly. One week the team would be flooded with new projects, the next everyone would be heading home early.
The stress of wondering if the business would survive each month was beginning to affect the quality of the work produced. Mark was finding his staff turnover was high because of the constant insecurity and worry.
Mark wondered, “How can I smooth out the peaks and troughs of work coming in?”
Mark was going grey.
The Bootcamp
Working in The Bootcamp with me, Mark came to appreciate that he would need a consistent sales strategy and system if he wanted to build a healthy business. He came to see that the only way a business can grow is by making regular and consistent sales. Of all of the Ten Truths, Truth Number 7, that nothing happens until we sell something, really struck home with Mark.
So we got started developing a simple and manageable sales system, and worked on increasing the sales focus of both Mark and his staff. To turn things around Mark would need to not only implement the new sales system but to work consistently at it, week in, week out.
And he did… and it took a lot of courage.
Mark found an easy-to-use customer relationship management (CRM) system, that had great sales funnels and pipeline reports. Then he set targets for himself and his team for numbers of calls to make, emails to send out and proposals to write and follow up. Every week Mark and his team had a 20-minute structured sales meeting.
Very soon things started to turn around, and just three short months later Mark could see a difference. By the end of the financial year the business was at a completely new level.
Now, a couple of years later, Mark has a stable team of 10 designers whose talents are being fully utilised. The business has a great pipeline of work ahead, and Mark now knows with a certainty what his resources are and how much revenue and profit the business will generate in the next three to six months.
And Mark lived happily ever after… The end.
Ask yourself… Where will you find the courage to make profound things happen in your business?
]]>Ever wondered why sometimes we don’t succeed, even when we know how to solve a problem? Find out how Vivienne overcame her cashflow problem and now couldn’t be happier.
Once upon a time… a long, long time ago in a country not unlike Australia…
Vivienne owned a consultancy that helpe
Truth 4 – Financial Management
d businesses implement OH&S practices in their workplaces.
She worked hard and had plenty of clients. She knew her market and had priced her services appropriately, but found she was forever struggling to pay the bills at the end of the month. There was nothing wrong with her profitability.
Cashflow was the obvious problem. But knowing this didn’t solve it.
Each week Vivienne thought, “I know my cashflow is hurting the business but it’s hard to makes changes and I don’t know how to do it.”
Vivienne was losing sleep.
The Bootcamp
When Vivienne joined me in The Bootcamp two years ago she made a wish and committed to it. She said:
“I wish to have money left over at the end of each month, and I am going to do whatever it takes to get there.”
So we got underway…
Now it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the first step on the path was to design a consistent debt collection strategy… We worked out a system of weekly actions and follow-ups and, most importantly, Vivienne vowed to stick to it with machine-like consistency.
So she did… and it took a lot of courage.
Vivienne started using the system, week in, week out, no matter how unpleasant some of the phone calls were or how yuck she felt getting debt collectors involved. She had the courage to honour her commitment to herself and to keep going until her cashflow problem was solved.
After six months of this relentless focus, it was clear that Vivienne’s business and her life would never look the same again.
Now… two years later, Vivienne is putting cash aside every month in an investment account and, I might add, she looks 10 years younger.
And Vivienne will live happily ever after… The end.