This Week@Work Pavlo met with a business owner who is deeply frustrated because his business has outgrown the ‘chassis’ or business model that it was originally built on.
As our business’s grow, we’ll all face this, we can’t stop running the business to rebuild the chassis, we have to build while we fly.
This Week@Work, a rusty bike chain made Pavlo think of Zig Ziglar, who started out as a door-to-door salesperson.
Zig understood the art of hunting for business, something that most business owners have gotten rusty at since we started to rely on digital media to bring business to our door.
Building a brand is a process that takes time, effort, and a clear understanding of what you want your brand to represent. It all starts with your first engagement in the market, whether through a product or a person. This initial engagement ignites the first transaction, which provides you with valuable insights into the market and helps you learn about yourself in relation to what you are doing.
As you continue to engage with customers, pay attention to those who come back for more and whom you enjoy serving. Double down on them as an affinity for the customers that matter is as important as an affinity for the product. Take the time to understand the values of the customers you enjoy serving and what matters most to them beyond transactions. Building relationships and getting the voice of the customer can help you tailor your brand to meet their needs.
Your brand’s personality should match the values of the customers you enjoy serving. This alignment of values and value helps build trust, which is crucial in establishing a brand. Define the experience you want your customers, employees, suppliers, and the media to have in relation to this brand personality. Avoid the trap of trying to be everything to everyone, as this leads to a lack of focus and can dilute your brand.
Craft an experience that can be reliably, predictably, and consistently delivered without you. Unless you create a relatable and repeatable experience that can scale, you cannot grow, and you cannot build momentum behind the brand.
Recruit a team that transcends the functional activity you are trying to fill. Look for people who match the activities of the job that needs to be done, and then focus on values. An excellent team can help you scale your brand and provide the experience you want your customers to have. And then invest in your brand. If it’s a secret, and nobody knows about it, where is its value? Make sure people know about your brand by investing in marketing, advertising, and other promotional efforts.
Finally, it’s essential to live and lead your brand. You are the custodian of your brand, and it’s up to you to ensure that your team understands the values and personality that your brand represents. As you live your brand, you’ll attract the right customers, employees, and suppliers, which will help you continue to grow and build momentum behind your brand.
Building a brand is a journey, but by focusing on your customers, their values, and creating a consistent experience, you can build a brand that lasts. It’s up to you to invest in your brand, recruit the right team, and live and lead your brand to success..
For the radio show click here.
I recently facilitated a business growth workshop for 89 established business CEOs, and the key question that arose was, “How do we get growth in a low-growth economy, riddled with power outages, held back by skills deficits, eroded by inflation, and impeded by gross negligence from the government?” Here are a few approaches to delivering growth across our client base today.
Growth begins with your mindset.
The foundation for growth in any business starts with your mindset. How you think affects how you engage and behave. There are two mindsets:
An operating mindset and a growth mindset. The operating mindset works hard to get growth but often hits a ceiling, building frustration that results in blame and cynicism. It does not yield growth!
A growth mindset works hard and smart. Acknowledging that most of your thinking and understanding is shadowed by not even knowing what you don’t know, or doubt, leads to a curious engagement with insights, perspectives, and new approaches. It helps create a restless and relentless intent to continuously improve, learn, and try new approaches. Across most of the developed world economies, a 64 year old business owner last experienced persistent inflation and interest rate increases at the age of 20. This invalidates much of what individuals experience in traversing the current inflationary and interest rate rises that govern these economies today. If the old dog won’t allow itself to be taught new tricks, it might well perish without a fresh perspective, new insights, and the courage to do things differently.
Growth needs a plan.
To achieve growth, you need a plan that is engineered through design and implementation. There are seven types of growth, each distinct from the other, whose timing and attention are vital. These include organic growth, financial growth, geographic growth, product/service line growth, customer segment growth, acquisition growth, and franchising growth.
Growth must be hunted.
Low growth means that you must grow by outplaying your competitors and eating their lunch. You must also grow by proactively responding to the changes in the status quo governing the problems you solve for your customers, how they behave and buy, seeking opportunities created by corporate outsourcing work to lighten their cost load and become more agile, and from accidental privatization resulting from government incompetence in service delivery.
Growth needs a number.
Tracking, measuring, and achieving growth requires a number to manage your path to success. A company valuation is not luck and prayer; it is primarily engineered, with luck playing a “timing role.” This number allows you to measure and manage your growth effectively.
Growth needs a team.
Your team is crucial to achieving growth, and it is important to ensure that everyone is aware of the growth plan. In over 10,000 surveyed businesses, 95% of employees were unaware of the growth plan, leaving the CEO to do all the heavy lifting. This can result in hitting a growth ceiling because you reach your capacity, and worse, you may fail the business because you burn out.
Growth is intentional and supported by a plan that is brought to life through your strategy, business design, team, and target. The economy’s condition is largely irrelevant when it comes to achieving growth. By adopting a growth mindset, creating a plan, hunting growth opportunities, measuring your progress, and building a strong team, you can unlock opportunities and overcome challenges to achieve sustainable growth in your business.
This Week@Work, Pavlo facilitated a business battleplan with a room full of warriors, also known as business owners! The discussions about growth reiterated the same three big challenges to growth that he see’s over and over again, all over the world.
Understand them, and build a battleplan to overcome them.
This Week@Work, Pavlo presented a series of workshops with business owners looking for scale and growth, of course! One of the big discussion points was who should lead that growth. As the business owner you’re the biggest investor in your business and growth inherently carries risk.
You need to be the one driving growth as you have everything to lose or gain from it.
This Week@Work, a fierce debate around technology, and ChatGPT specifically got Pavlo thinking about the importance of being an early adopter to stay ahead of your competition.
You can choose to constantly explore what new technology is out there, understand how it can benefit your business, and to implement it to lead your industry, or you can take a more cautious approach, see how it pans out, and you will find yourself lagging behind.
When it comes to business growth, it’s important to shift our focus away from revenue and profit as mere indicators of success. Rather, revenue and profit should be seen as crucial triggers and indicators of change in a business’s development lifecycle. This is especially true if your goal is to build an asset, not just a job.
So, what are the criteria for building an asset? First and foremost, leadership plays a pivotal role in this regard. You need to understand what you want to achieve, why it matters, and how you can direct your resources to make it happen.
But how do you position growth within this framework? One way is to ask yourself the following questions: When should you pursue growth? Why is growth important to your business? What kind of business are you in? Let’s explore these questions in more detail.
Positioning Growth: When, Why, and What
Figuring out what business you’re in is essential for understanding how to grow. Take the example of Jack the Baker. Is he in the business of selling croissants or or providing a solution for fresh baked goods 356 days a year? Once you’ve determined the answer to this question, you can start to focus on the right kind of growth.
In this phase, revenue growth matters most, not profit
For businesses that are just starting out or looking to establish themselves, revenue growth should be the primary focus. It’s a crucial indicator of demand for your product or service and can help you build a solid foundation for profitability down the road.
Organic Growth: When, Why, and What
Organic growth is all about creating time to focus on growth without getting bogged down in daily operational activities. The goal is to achieve steady-state revenue growth that matches profit growth and tracks with it over time.
Accelerated Growth: When, Why, and What
Accelerated growth is all about dominating your positioning within a well-defined segment. This requires a strong understanding of your target market and a focus on profitability within that segment.
Next Level Growth: When, Why, and What?
Next level growth is all about de-risking your business by scaling profitability. It’s not just about profit quantum; it’s about ensuring that profitability is sustainable and that you’re not relying on one-time windfalls to achieve growth.
Capital Growth: When, Why, and What?
Capital growth is all about raising capital or looking to exit through a sale. It requires a focus on both profit volume (as a risk indicator) and profitability (as a growth indicator) to ensure that you’re building a strong, sustainable asset that’s attractive to investors.
When it comes to growth, it’s essential to understand the triggers and indicators that drive change in your business. Revenue and profit are crucial indicators of change, but they should be seen in the context of building a sustainable, scalable, and profitable asset. By positioning growth in this way, you can achieve long-term success and build a business that lasts.
This week@work Pavlo met with a frustrated, established business owner who is looking to sell his business in the next 5 years. As part of his exit strategy he ramped up revenues to appeal to a buyer, but his success has put him squarely in ‘No Man’s Land’: Too big for private buyers to afford and too small for listed entities to be interested in.
It’s another warning to start with the end in mind so you can build your business for the right buyer.
As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operations of your business. After all, there are endless tasks that need to be done, from managing employees to coordinating with vendors to ensuring that customer orders are fulfilled on time. However, if you want your business to truly thrive and grow, it’s important to shift your focus from working IN your business to working ON your business.
What does it mean to work ON your business? Essentially, it means focusing your time and attention on the strategic initiatives and developments that will drive growth and success in the long run. This includes things like identifying new market opportunities, developing new products and services, and creating scalable systems and processes that can support growth.
On the other hand, working IN your business involves focusing on the day-to-day operations and activities that keep things running smoothly. This might include managing employees, handling customer inquiries, and ensuring that products are delivered on time and on budget.
Of course, both types of work are essential for a successful business. However, if you’re spending too much time working IN your business, you may find that you’re not able to devote enough time and energy to working ON your business. This can ultimately limit your ability to grow and scale your business over time.
So how do you make the shift from working IN your business to working ON your business? One approach is to conduct an ON vs IN audit, which involves creating a spreadsheet to track your time and attention across different business functions and activities.
For example, you might create columns for input functions, activities you perform, minimum time required per activity, frequency per month, and time allocation per month. This can help you to identify areas where you’re spending too much time on day-to-day operations and not enough time on strategic initiatives and growth-oriented activities.
Ideally, you should aim to spend at least 70% of your time working ON your business and at most 30% of your time working IN your business. This balance can help ensure that you’re dedicating enough time and energy to growth-oriented activities, while still ensuring that your day-to-day operations are running smoothly.
To make the shift from working IN to working ON your business, you may also need to focus on simplifying, systematizing, and delegating your business operations. This might involve streamlining your processes, automating routine tasks, and delegating responsibilities to trusted team members.
Ultimately, the key to working ON your business is to build a scalable platform for growth, then focus on driving growth through strategic initiatives and developments. By taking the time to step back from day-to-day operations and focus on the big picture, you can position your business for long-term success and create a lasting legacy for yourself and your team.