Work Within Your Business Or Work Upon It?
(Part 2 or 2)
Formulating An Effective Business Model
So now you’ve got a wider understanding of what needs to be done, it’s time to put things into practice. Picture your current business as a model or a franchise that would attract interest from potential buyers. It’s established, and being “established” means that it’s already proven itself to be successful. It works!
Life and Business
Let’s get a tiny bit philosophical for just a second. What’s your main objective in life? Where are you headed, what’s your purpose and what do you want out this whole thing? As soon as you’ve determined the answer to those questions, you’ll be able to focus your energy, enthusiasm and motivation in a particular direction to help you achieve your goals. As well as being a business plan, you should view this a plan for your life accomplishments!
Organization and Management
It’s crucial that you have a very good idea of how many people you’ll need to operate your business smoothly and also consider the demands that go hand in hand with each occupational position.
The best way to do this is actually working in the positions yourself so you have first hand experience, and you can use this information in the Operations Manual to provide a guideline of exactly the sort of work expected from any particular position.
Create a system of management. The vast majority of managerial scenarios are established early in the life of a business. Document these reoccurring scenarios and develop a repeatable management strategy.
Standard Bearers
Standards are important because they give you a guideline of how to be effective. Factors such as gross profit, gross revenue, although sometimes not accurately determinable, are important to establish from a very early stage because if your business can’t meet the financial requirements it’s really not worth being in business.
People
We’ll discuss this important issue in more detail later. The key thing to keep in mind is that you have to ensure the other people working within the business fully understand the importance of their job, and why if they fail to complete their required remit it can be very detrimental to the business as a whole. The people are fuel the business and facilitate it’s smooth operation.
Marketing
The marketing strategy should, first and foremost, take into consideration your customers, why they buy and who they are. Initially you can gather customer profiles from every job you were involved with last year. Pool the information together into one secure place, such as cards or spreadsheets.
Figures
Probably the most important factor that you must always be aware of in your business. Knowing your numbers is crucial because if you don’t have a good grasp of them then you won’t know what’s effective and what’s just not working within your business. If the numbers show that something isn’t working then why would you need to include it in your new business plan?
Franchise Prototype
So, hopefully, your thoughts should now be focusing on the business model. It allows your business to operate essentially independently without having to invest great amounts of time and effort into establishing new business structures each time.
Engage Your Employees
Make sure your employees know what your business is about and why it’s incumbent upon them to deliver a great service for the betterment of everyone. You can educate your employees directly or make it a sort of game. Offer incentives, bonuses, anything to make them feel appreciated for their work.
They all need to feel like an indispensable part of the business, like they’re special and invaluable! Create a fun, evolving environment and they’ll greatly appreciate being part of such a tremendous business.
The people are usually the face of the business. It’s the first thing a potential customer might see when directly visiting your location so it’s important that the people provide impeccable service. Making your employees feel appreciated can directly impact the sort of service they’ll provide your customers.
If you can detect enthusiasm within your employees it means customers will be able to see it too, and in turn they’ll get a very positive impression about your business and feel motivated to come back again!
Current Position
You need to know what stage your business has currently reached and there are some good indicators which can help you determine this:
Baby-Stage
You and your business are like the same organism. You breathe, eat, sleep your business all day, everyday but be careful! This pace can’t be maintained indefinitely, you’re only human. The enthusiasm will eventually fade and you could end up back at the beginning but this time around the rolls are reversed and you’re business becomes the Boss, as opposed to a person being the boss. Your business is running your life.
Teenager-Stage
The realization has dawned on you by now that you just can’t cope with all this work on your own. The idea of bringing in outside help is getting more and more appealing or maybe you’ve already gone ahead and hired someone to help ease your workload.
Whatever the case, it’s important for you to monitor your business and keep a strong eye on it’s progress. It’s easy to fall into a comfort zone and let someone else do the work but that’s something you need to avoid at all costs.
Adult-Stage
Now you’ve got real experience with your business. You know very well how the business operates and you’ve envisioned a clear path to follow. You know what needs to be done in the present to make your goals a reality. Your business is essentially a product and it needs to attract customers. You realize that how the job is accomplished is more important that what is ultimately done. Appreciate how things need to be done and do them!
So whatever stage you think you’ve reached so far remember to constantly analyze your business, piece by piece, to see what’s effective and what needs to be thrown on the rubbish heap. Remain focused and try not to get overwhelmed, through perseverance you’ll find the best way to make a success out of your business.
Five Reasons of Failure
- No action. You have to try in order to succeed, if you don’t apply any effort you won’t see any results.
- Inconsistency. Remember the value of having a system. It means that you can consistently duplicate patterns and have a true winning business formula. Being inconsistent means you fall away from your system.
- Half-Way. The ideas you have are wonderful but being involved with too many ideas means you’ll never perfect the good ones.
- Procrastination. If you want everything to be instantly perfect and pristine you need to wake up. Don’t make excuses and do the work that needs to be done.
- No Plan. Without a solid plan you’ll have no idea of where you need to start and where you need to end up.
Hopefully, this information will prove to be highly valuable to you and will help you not only improve the operations of your business but also set you on a path to make your business almost flawless. Just a few small changes within any business can triple it’s effectiveness.
Remember to work upon your business rather than just within it. Formulate a repeatable system, value your employees and soon your business will evolve into something incredible. You have the tools now, you just need to use them.
So for the time being I’ll say good luck, although in business sometimes you can make your own luck if you just have the right strategy. 😉