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Building While You Fly: Achieving Sustainable Growth for Your Business

Building While You Fly: Achieving Sustainable Growth for Your Business

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Asset of Value, Creating time, Insights, Operational systems, Scale & Grow.

Introduction: Building a successful business is akin to our personal development journey. Just as we evolve from infancy to adulthood, our businesses must also adapt and grow to support their expanding needs. Relying on the same foundation that launched your business may hinder its potential for growth. To avoid adverse outcomes such as being trapped in the day-to-day operations, losing customers, team members, and suppliers, and stagnant growth, it is crucial to embrace the concept of building while you fly. In other words, as your business takes off, you must continuously improve and upgrade your infrastructure to soar higher and achieve sustainable growth.

  1. Evolving with the Right Chassis: Similar to our musculoskeletal system adapting to support our growth, your business needs a strong foundation that can accommodate its expanding size and ambitions. The chassis that served you well during the initial stages may not be suitable for long-term growth. By recognizing the need for a more robust infrastructure, you can build it out to operate independently of you and thrive beyond your individual efforts.
  2. Escaping the Life of Firefighting: Failing to build while you fly often leaves you in a never-ending cycle of firefighting. You find yourself constantly addressing urgent issues, unable to focus on strategic growth initiatives. By investing time and resources into building a solid foundation, you can release yourself from the daily operational challenges and gain the freedom to concentrate on driving your business forward.
  3. Safeguarding Customers, Teams, and Suppliers: If you don’t evolve your business, it can have detrimental effects on your relationships with customers, team members, and suppliers. As your competitors adapt to changing market demands, you risk losing customers who seek innovative solutions elsewhere. Additionally, without a scalable infrastructure, your team may become overwhelmed, leading to disengagement or turnover. Suppliers, too, may be hesitant to collaborate if they perceive your business as stagnant. Building while you fly ensures that you retain these crucial stakeholders and foster long-term relationships based on growth and mutual success.
  4. Embracing a Virtuous Cycle of Growth: Stagnant growth can create a negative feedback loop, draining your business of vitality and potential. On the other hand, building while you fly establishes a virtuous cycle of growth and confidence. By consistently investing in your business and upgrading its capabilities, you attract the right opportunities and talent, further fuelling your growth trajectory. This cycle fosters an environment of continuous improvement and optimism, empowering your business to reach new heights.
  5. The 9-5 Operation and 5-9 Investment: To successfully build while you fly, it is essential to strike a balance between day-to-day operations and investing in future growth. The traditional 9-5 work schedule may fulfil immediate responsibilities, but dedicating the 5-9 time slot to strategic planning, skill development, and innovation is equally crucial. By allocating time outside regular working hours to invest in your business, you can unlock numerous benefits.

Benefits of Building While You Fly:

Sustained Passion: By embracing the mindset of building while you fly, you remain enthusiastic about your business, constantly discovering new facets of yourself, your industry, and its potential.

Increased Efficiency: Investing time in growth-oriented activities allows you to optimize processes, improve productivity, and streamline operations, resulting in time saved that can be redirected toward expansion.

Competitive Advantage: Remaining proactive and forward-thinking positions your business on the front foot, ready to seize opportunities and adapt to industry shifts, enabling you to attract the right collaborators and stay ahead of the competition.

Sustainable Growth: Building while you fly propels your business toward sustained growth and success, as you continuously upgrade your infrastructure, attract new customers, nurture your team, and forge stronger partnerships. Building while you fly is a critical concept for achieving sustainable growth in your business. By acknowledging the need for ongoing evolution, you can avoid stagnation and unlock your business’s full potential. Escaping the life of firefighting, safeguarding valuable relationships, and fostering a cycle of growth and confidence are the rewards of investing time and resources into upgrading your infrastructure. Embrace the 9-5 operation and 5-9 investment approach, and you will witness your business soar to new heights, driven by continuous improvement and a passion for progress.

To listen to the full discussion from the show:

You need BOTH a resilient mindset AND a resilient business model to scale.

You need BOTH a resilient mindset AND a resilient business model to scale.

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Asset of Value, Creating time, Insights, Operational systems, Scale & Grow.

In today’s uncertain and evolving economy, scaling and dominating your industry require more than just a great product or service. It demands a combination of a resilient mindset and a resilient business model.

Resilience is the ability to persist and stay proactive despite challenging circumstances. By cultivating the right mindset and implementing a robust business model, entrepreneurs can navigate the ever-changing landscape and achieve long-term success.

The Power of a Resilient Mindset: A resilient mindset is the foundation for overcoming obstacles and staying ahead in the game. It is an attitude that governs your behaviour and shapes your response to adversity. Developing the following mindsets is crucial for sustainable growth:

  1. Operator Mindset: Embrace the day-to-day grind and persistence necessary for success. It grants you control over shaping and crafting your business.
  2. Growth Mindset: Continuously seek opportunities for improvement and learning. Be open to innovation and adaptability, always striving for growth.
  3. Winning Mindset: Cultivate a positive outlook and a belief in your ability to succeed. Maintain a determined attitude and approach challenges as opportunities for victory.
  4. Investor Mindset: Think strategically and long-term, weighing risks and rewards. Make decisions that align with your vision and attract investment.

Building a Resilient Business Model: A resilient business model is the blueprint for translating effort into economic success.

Conventional wisdom suggests focusing on product or service excellence, establishing functions, recruiting to enable those, and then growing by adding new products or markets.

The Asset of Value approach offers a more customer-centric perspective:

  1. Define Your Target Market: Understand the specific customers you serve and their needs. Tailor your offerings to solve their problems effectively.
  2. Customer Experience Focus: Prioritize creating an exceptional customer experience throughout the client journey. Differentiate yourself by delivering that experience consistently in a way that differentiates you from your competitors.
  3. Design in Collaboration with Your Team: Engineer your business model together with your team. Delegate leadership roles and foster a culture of collective responsibility and growth.
  4. Lead Growth: As the business owner you have to lead your business’s growth and ensure that growth doesn’t dismantle your system of delivery. Maintain a consistent level of service quality as you expand and enter new markets or add new products.

Combining personal resilience with a robust business model maximizes your efforts and drives economic success. By staying adaptable, continuously improving, and keeping your customers at the centre of your operations, you position yourself for exponential returns and long-term sustainability.

To listen to the full discussion from the show:

This Week@Work: If you allow it to rust and atrophy, you’ll not have it when you need it!

This Week@Work: If you allow it to rust and atrophy, you’ll not have it when you need it!

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Leadership, Mindset, Scale & Grow, Week at Work.

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.

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Unlocking Growth in a Low-Growth Economy: Insights and Strategies for Established Businesses

Unlocking Growth in a Low-Growth Economy: Insights and Strategies for Established Businesses

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Creating time, Insights, Lead generation and conversion, Operational systems, Team, Trends.

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: Growth needs to be led, ideally by you

This Week@Work: Growth needs to be led, ideally by you.

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Leadership, Scale & Grow, Week at Work.

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.

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Harness technology to lead your industry

This Week@Work: Harness technology to lead your industry

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Lead generation and conversion, Leadership, Positioning, Scale & Grow, Week at Work.

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.

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How much time do you spend on the Bridge of your business? and how much time in the engine room

What Does It Mean to Work ON Your Business, Not IN It, and Why Does It Matter?

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Creating time, Insights, Lead generation and conversion, Operational systems, Team, Trends.

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.

What Does It Mean to Work ON Your Business, Not IN It, and Why Does It Matter?
What Does It Mean to Work ON Your Business, Not IN It, and Why Does It Matter?

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.

robot and human finger connecting

ChatGPT: friend or foe, and what does it mean for a business owner?

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on . Posted in Innovation, Insights, Lead generation and conversion, Operational systems, Pavlo Phitidis, Positioning, Scale & Grow, Team.

“ChatGPT: The AI Language Model Taking the Business World by Storm”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a topic of interest for decades, but with the advent of cutting-edge technology, AI is now more accessible and applicable to the business world than ever before. One such AI tool that has put the business world on red alert is ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, a private AI organization founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba. With Microsoft among its investors and a $1bn investment, OpenAI is a driving force in the development of AI technology.

So, what is ChatGPT, and why is it so significant? Essentially, ChatGPT is a tool that helps businesses and individuals to communicate and engage with their customers and audiences in a more effective and efficient manner. However, it is important to note that ChatGPT is not a solution in itself but rather like an exoskeleton, providing support and enhancement to human capabilities.

The rise of ChatGPT has caused concern among some, who fear that its widespread use could lead to a homogenization of language and a loss of creativity. While there is some truth to these fears, ChatGPT has the potential to free up time and energy for individuals, allowing them to focus on more important and creative tasks. Moreover, the technology is still in its early stages and will likely continue to evolve and improve, offering even greater benefits in the future.

Pavlo expressed interest in his perspective on ChatGpt in a recent Money Show podcast.

So, why are we talking about ChatGPT now? As the first of many AI tools set to enter the public domain in a usable format, ChatGPT represents a huge opportunity for businesses to get ahead and use it to increase their performance.

Looking to the future, ChatGPT has the potential to create a range of new careers, including language model experts who will be responsible for fine-tuning, teaching, and optimizing the technology. Content creators who can step up and go beyond the vanilla will also have a key role to play, as will project managers, who will be required for all projects utilizing ChatGPT.

In terms of competition, it’s inevitable that it will come. However, the opportunity to use ChatGPT across all business functions is simply too good to ignore. From marketing research and communications to sales, operations, accounting, procurement, and recruitment, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses operate.

Marketing departments, for example, can use ChatGPT for research, with the ability to ask and get an answer, without having to spend hours searching across websites looking to upsell. ChatGPT can also be used to improve the quality of communications and product descriptions, as well as translate website content into different languages.

In sales, ChatGPT can help to understand customers and markets, and improve engagement with relevant messaging, even in second languages.

In operations, ChatGPT can automate repetitive tasks and provide consistent product descriptions across all media. In accounting, ChatGPT can help with benchmarking and interpretation, while in procurement, it can aid in research and negotiation. And in recruitment, ChatGPT can be used to create job descriptions and KPIs.

ChatGPT is a game-changer for the business world and represents a huge opportunity for businesses to improve their performance and stay ahead of the competition. The future is here, and the time to act is now.