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Tag: Asset of Value

PAST EVENT: Lock and load your business for 2023 / 1 December online

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Past Events.

Join us for 55 minutes on 3rd November to understand  how we would work with you and your team to achieve your business goals and ambitions. 

Lock & load your business to grow & dominate in 2023

Business growth system

1 December 2022 
1pm SAST / 11am GMT 
Online

As the year races to a close, it’s easy to get stuck in the engine room of your business, being ‘busy’. But now is the time to be thinking about and acting towards the goals you want to achieve next year

If you don’t, you’ll be in exactly the same place in 12 months’ time.

If you do, you’ll be in a better position to  get ahead of your competitors and take your business to its next level.

For 15 years, Aurik has partnered with over 3 000 businesses to deliver average annual growth rates of 28.9% and average EBITDA growth of 32.4%

Join us on 1st December to understand how we have gotten this right, and to gain a fresh perspective on your own business. 

In 55 minutes we will cover: 

  • What worked and what failed in 2022
  • Opportunities and threats 2023 will bring
  • What mindset, business model and approach will best capitalise on them

Speaker

Pavlo Phitidis

As an entrepreneur and investor, Pavlo offers over 25 years of direct experience in conceptualising and building businesses across three continents. He has developed and brought to market business assets in excess of $400m through a combination of business start-ups, turnarounds, sales and acquisitions. Using his hands-on experience, business capabilities and relationship networks, he continues to support the growth of business owners through Aurik , a venture capital business growth service.

Pavlo is a regular media commentator, an international speaker on business growth and author of the best-selling, Sweat Scale $ell as well as his newest title: Reset Rebuild Reignite.

Register here



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PAST EVENT: In-person KZN 12 October 2022

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Past Events.

Join us for 55 minutes on 3rd November to understand  how we would work with you and your team to achieve your business goals and ambitions. 

In person in Umhlanga, KZN 12 October 2022

Business growth system

46 business owners 
R4,071 billion of annual turnovers in the room

Pavlo Phitidis

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business exit

Asset of Value questions: Exit

Written by admin on . Posted in Exits, Videos.

job vs asset

When the business you’ve built is just a job

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Exits, Grow & Exit, Leadership.

Don’t look where you fell, look where you slipped is a favourite African Proverb.

Listen to this podcast from The Money Show where Pavlo Phitidis unpacks why this resonates with him in regard to many business owners he works with:


It came to life after 2 consultations with 2 different business owners today.

The first business owner, in his 50’s has built a remarkable business in a commoditised market. With a $30m annual revenue, he has generated a solid income for himself and the partners. They now want to monetise their 32 years of investment and risk through a sale. This would allow them to enjoy the capital gain that would be their greatest wealth generating instance. But the market does not see their value. After a due diligence from a prospective acquiror, it was evident that the partners hold and own relationships that are responsible for 56% of annual revenue. The uncertainty that these relationships would remain in play after they sold, led to the acquiror discounting their asking price by a hefty 60%.

The second business owner in the security sector is in his late 30’s. Over the last 5 years he has built a very smart, tech-based solution for the eventing industry. Specifically, it is suited to big entertainment, sports, and political events. Recently, his business took off. But his clients, on the back of big, medium-term contracts, insist on his presence at the events, even though he needn’t be there for the service to function and perform. He wants to work with Aurik to resolve this problem. We’ve agreed to help. It’s a problem we have solved many times before. Today was the third postponement of our first session. But the news, like last time, is all good. He is overwhelmed. Having just signed on 3 new stadia and bidding with a high likelihood of success for the Olympics, he urgently has to deal with client needs. Urgent, but how important? This path will lead to the same problem faced by the first business owner – is the business an asset or is it a job?

Starting and building a business needs you at its core. It’s you that needs to learn what works and what doesn’t and through that, find a path to establishment and growth. Transiting from your daily direct leadership to a team then becomes essential. This is where many fail and 5,10,20 years on, still remain front and centre of the businesses sustainability or growth. So how do you get it right? And when should you act to get it right?

How do you get it done?

  1. Simplify – narrow the scope of your business both in terms of who your customers and clients are as well as the extent of the services you provide to solve their problems. A simple business is scalable and a scalable business is a growth business.
  2. Systematise – translating and articulating the activities you perform in how you market, sell and service your clients into teachable activities, organised into a sequence with measured outcomes is next. Once done, linking and stitching them into a single system or experience from the view of your customer is vital.
  3. Delegate – with your business organised into a single system, made up of the many activities, you can now empower your team to perform the activities. Remember, the activities generate the experience, not your personality. If you cannot get it done, discard that element of the experience and make do with what you can get done.
  4. Grow – with a scalable platform for growth in place, growing beyond where you currently are needs to be led by you. Setting a framework for growth that maintains the scalable service platform you have now built is essential. Failing to do so unwinds all the effort and will see you again, front and centre of the business, or put differently, the job you have built.

When should you start?

Once you have traversed the first 3-5 years of start-up, the time to transfer relationships, processes and responsibilities becomes essential. Should you opt not to or fail to do so successfully, you are building a job, not an asset. You limit the scope of your business’s potential, limit the opportunities to attract driven team members and fail your own future wealth creating instance.

Urgent and important are different. Urgent mostly means that you are being led by other people’s agendas. A client must be responded to. But you have full control over which clients you have, the promises that are made and how you build your business to operate without you. That’s the important, strategic, structural stuff of turning a job into an asset. Put differently, building a business that can be successfully sold in the future to become your greatest wealth generating instance.

EVENT: Build your business into an Asset of Value

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Asset of Value, Aurik Business, Innovation, Leadership, Mindset.

Join business growth specialist and Aurik CEO, Pavlo Phitidis for a 60 minute interactive discussion around a framework for established business owners to build your business into your greatest wealth-generating asset.

This online session will leave you with practical insights into how you can:

  • Re-shape your products and services for a changed economic environment
  • Re-build dependable marketing, sales and operational systems
  • Focus and empower your teams to ensure performance
  • Spend more time leading rather than doing
  • Reignite your business to grow both revenue AND profitability
  • Exit your business successfully when you are ready

Date: 30 September 2020

Time: 08h00 to 09h00

Register here: https://aurik.com/ab-sa-webinar-30-09-2020/

HOW TO GET THE RIGHT EMPLOYEES TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS INTO AN ASSET OF VALUE

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Aurik Business, Leadership, Team.

Tough economic times mean that unemployment is rife. But, as a growing business owner, you’ve noticed that it seems near impossible to find the right kind of people for your company. Unfortunately, the most skilled and best people often cling to the safety net of their current jobs. As the owner of a developing business, finding the right people, at the right time, to join your company and help it grow towards being an asset of value, is critical.

On The Money Show with Bruce Whitfield, Pavlo talked about the right way to hire the right people for your business:

IT’S NOT JUST THE ECONOMY THAT’S THE PROBLEM

Even though unemployment may be rife right now, that’s not the only concern. Inflexible labour laws mean that it’s difficult to hire and, if things go badly, fire someone if they don’t work well for your business. It’s absolutely vital that the first twenty to thirty people you hire to join your growing business are the right fit, because the wrong hire could bring your company to its knees. Moreover, the urgency behind needing good people for your company could lead you towards hiring the wrong people, by accident.

IT’S DECISION TIME

Choosing to grow your team, or not to grow your team, both bear a cost. If you opt not to hire anyone, you’re not building a business: you’re merely creating a job for yourself. If you choose to hire, you must hire well, and commit to the path of growing your business, because people are an essential element of that journey.

WHAT NOT TO DO

You may be feeling the pressure to hire, but the biggest mistake you can make is to hire someone quickly. Quick hires seldom turn out to be good hires, and a bad hire can derail your business before its even begun to operate properly. Notably too, you shouldn’t hire someone to do a job – you should hire someone who brings skills, a good attitude, and true value, to the systems of your business, while operating within them.

WHAT TO DO

Building your business into an Asset of Value begins by creating the systems that enable its growth. Building that System of Delivery begins with:

  • Knowing why you do what you do: A business that is being built into an asset of value, focuses on securing customers and delivering a service to them, through its systems. A true asset of value knows what business it is in, and exactly who it serves.
  • Knowing your customers’ problems: Your business is defined by your customers’ problems, and its services are built to solve those problems. Knowing, understanding, and responding to, those problems is critical.
  • Creating a system that effectively solves those problems.
  • Employ people to operate systems, rather than doing a job

Once your system of delivery is set up, you can look towards employing people to operate those systems. Creating effective systems, and giving your team well-defined job descriptions, enables them to operate in a manner that’s measurable and motivating. That then goes on to build a positive company culture.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

Success teaches us very little, but learning from mistakes is invaluable. Enabling your team to make mistakes, to fail and to learn, is essential. By safeguarding your business and empowering your team to take small steps first, and make small mistakes as they learn, is an imperative. Managing the risk of mistakes will ultimately make your employee, and your growing business, stronger, and better equipped to face future challenges.

 

Asset of Value

Asset of Value strategy series

Written by pippa@aurik.com on . Posted in Creating time, Exits, Funding, Lead generation and conversion, Operational systems, Positioning, Team.

THE ASSET OF VALUE STRATEGY SERIES

Welcome to the Asset of Value Series.

As part of the Nedbank Business Accelerator Campaign with 702 , our CEO Pavlo Phitidis, produced a podcast series to help successful, established entrepreneurs get to the next level. At Aurik we do this by giving business owners like yourself the opportunity to share your stories and insights, and in turn, we work with you as the business owner to drive key changes necessary to accelerate your business. In the Asset of value series, we explore your journey to building your business into an Asset of Value.

Episode 1: Building your business into an Asset of Value

Every business owner invests time, money and effort into building their business. Whilst passion is important in achieving this, it’s not enough. The purpose behind this investment should be clearly stated and that is to build your business into an Asset of Value. What is an Asset of Value, why is this important, how do you do it and what will you gain from it!

Episode 2: Measuring your Asset of Value

When you build your business into an Asset of Value, understanding how to measure your progress towards this goal is important. To do this, you need to understand how your business would be valued by a buyer. This could be a private buyer or corporate buyer, an investor or, if passing it onto the next generation, family or staff through a management buy-out. Understanding how valuation works, gives you control over the future value of your business. There are three levers that you can “pull” to get your business valuation right. What are these levers, how to I build them into my business and what impact will they have on building my Asset of Value.

Episode 3: Creating a customer centric business

The first lever of valuation, how far into the future will my business generate revenues, is answered by defining who the customer you serve is! How do you find these customers and more importantly, once you find them, how do figure out how to get them to buy and stay with you?

Episode 4: Building a systems-driven business

Are you building a business asset or have you simply built your business into a job for yourself? It’s easy to test. If your business cannot function without you being there, that’s a job. If it can function without you for 3 or 4 weeks, it’s likely an asset. The difference between them are business systems. The activities that enable your business to generate customers’ enquiries, win over customers and serve them in a manner that they stay are examples of systems. This is called a System of Delivery and its impact on your business valuation is profound.

Episode 5: Developing a risk managed business

Putting all your eggs into one basket is not a wise business strategy. The environment of business today is so unpredictable, one stumble and you trip and fall – all your eggs are broken. A risk managed business is one that has multiple customers, that enjoy being served by your business and are found in different sectors. Should one sector struggle, the customers in the other sectors keep you going. It’s also business that has no customer responsible for more than 10% of your revenues. Should they stop using you for whatever reason, your business continues. Imagine if they were responsible for half your revenues? With a risk managed revenue profile in play in your business, it makes you a price maker, rather than a price taker in the event of a sale and has a huge impact on your business valuation.

Episode 6: Employing the right people in your business

Once you have a clear sense of who your customers are, how to service them and a System of Delivery in place, you are ready to employ responsibly and effectively. Think about it, we mostly employ people to do a job. What is that job, what are the activities that that job should perform, can they be measured, what’s a fair salary for that job? These questions are seldom asked and answered when we, under pressure with too many things to do, reach out for help and employ someone who we hope is right. And they are often wrong. How do you employ the right people to do the right thing at the right time and at the right price when you build your business into an Asset of Value?

Episode 7: Driving your business to the next level

We hear this expression “the next level” often. What does it mean and how do you get there is often left unanswered?

Episode 8: Succession planning in your business

Wealth is cumulative and time based for most of us. We often start our businesses with very little and it takes time to grow them into valuable assets. Often, to grow them into significant assets, it can take a second generation. This could be family or staff that we pass the baton onto to get the business to its next level. How do you do this and what approach can be adopted that makes the founder and successors ensure that the business gets the best from them both, that the founders wisdom is passed on successfully and that the successors ideas are adopted to keep the business relevant and contemporary with the inevitable\ changes in the business environment.