Growth Engines: Carving out a real estate niche
In this article, originally featured in Business Leader: In the fiercely competitive market, The Modern House is setting itself apart using rich, curated content and a design-centric approach
Tag: Growth&Scale
Leader in your industry? So what…
This Week@Work what does it mean to be a leader in your industry? You need to define and measure your specific sphere of leadership to lead your decision-making, manage your resources and align your team. Otherwise, it is just a hollow platitude.
Growth Engines: The evolution of a car dealer dynasty
In this article, originally featured in Business Leader: Meet the father and son duo aiming to take their family business, car dealership Romans International, to new heights
Scale is not growth Growth is not scale
This Week@Work a stepwise analogy makes the point about scaling your business with the systems and processes to prepare for growth, and repeating that process continuously to keep growing your business, sustainably.
Lessons from Boring Businesses
“Boring businesses” often go unnoticed but hold valuable lessons in sustainability and success. Despite their lack of media attention and glamour, these businesses demonstrate critical principles that can benefit any industry.
Understanding Boring Businesses
Boring businesses are rarely in the spotlight. Examples include recycling operations or foam fabrication. Foam fabrication, for instance, involves purchasing large bales of foam, cutting and shaping them, and then supplying them to furniture and mattress manufacturers. While these industries may lack excitement, they are essential and well-established, often attracting little new investment or media coverage.
Key Lessons in Longevity
The primary advantage of boring businesses lies in their maturity and stability. These industries are typically entrenched with established suppliers and customers, creating a steady, if unremarkable, ecosystem. For instance, the foam fabrication industry relies on a few large suppliers, leaving little room for new entrants. Similarly, customers in these industries treat the products as commodities, focusing on price and convenience.
The Competitive Edge
In such markets, the key to success lies in efficiency and reliability. Using the foam fabricator example, companies that excelled were those that could deliver quickly and reliably. Initially, the ability to fabricate and deliver foam within a six-hour window was a significant competitive edge. However, as this became standard, the focus shifted to cost control and efficiency.
Embracing Innovation in Boring Industries
Despite their mundane nature, boring businesses present unique opportunities for innovation. While these businesses might be reluctant to invest in modernization, those that do can significantly distinguish themselves. By introducing efficient processes and modernizing their operations, these businesses can attract new talent and investment.
Take Away
Boring businesses, though often overlooked, provide critical insights into business longevity and success. They thrive on stability, efficiency, and cost control. For entrepreneurs, the key takeaway is that success doesn’t always come from exciting industries. Sometimes, the greatest opportunities lie in the most mundane sectors. By focusing on efficiency and embracing innovation, even the dullest business can become a beacon of success.
Elite Business: Lead in uncertainty by setting and selling your business destination!
In this article, originally featured in Elite Business: Like a health-check for humans, a business health check aligns you and your team to drive towards a common destination.
In the face of uncertainty, the key to maintaining sanity and effectiveness as well as securing a meaningful return on your time and attention is to anchor on something within your control; that is measurable, and communicable. But what should this anchor be?
As a business owner and leader, you are a servant to your business. Serving it means catering to what it needs to thrive. Consider this: when you go for a medical check-up, after a few prods, plugs, needles, and readings, a physician qualifies you as healthy. A health check-up assesses overall health, identifies potential issues early, and allows for discussion of health concerns with a doctor.
This comprehensive assessment includes a review of personal and family medical history, lifestyle, and symptoms to identify risk factors; a physical examination checking vital signs and various body parts; blood tests to measure important biomarkers; recommended screening tests based on age, sex, and risk factors; and imaging tests if needed. The check-up concludes with lifestyle and wellness counselling on diet, exercise, and other health factors.
To conduct a health check on your business, you need an ideal “state of health” measure – something simple, accessible, and clean that considers the holistic well-being of the business. For instance, having a good heart rate but a poor liver does not equate to good health.
Company valuation is a comprehensive health check for your business. It considers the business and its context and is driven by five primary levers:
Positioning
What makes your business stand out in a competitive, noisy industry?
System of delivery
How do you find new customers, engage them, onboard them, fulfil your promises, and retain them using business systems, processes, and activities?
Purposeful team
How do you get the right people to do the right thing at the right time?
Growth
How do you grow revenue, profit, and profitability?
Value
How do you navigate your business and direct your team toward a clearly defined destination using your positioning as a blueprint to design and institute your system of delivery to guide and empower your team’s performance that generates growth?
These levers span your entire business and industry. They are all equally measurable, making your company valuation the most comprehensive yet straightforward health indicator.
How you communicate this idea to your team is crucial. Revenues are driven by the quantity and value of products and services you sell and deliver. Connecting the quantity of products or services to your company valuation offers a more accessible and inclusive understanding of your company’s health check. Instead of using a £50 million company valuation as a destination, use the language of the business that everyone understands – make 500 cars, deliver 150 projects, or sell 3,000 subscriptions in the year of measure.
This inclusive language gets everyone on board and helps them understand where you are heading. Next, confirm why it matters. If your business purpose is well-defined and your business’s impact on the lives of customers, suppliers, the environment, and society is clear, doing more becomes almost a responsibility.
Finally, relate it to “what’s in it for me” for your team. A growing business secures work, employment, and advancement for those willing to earn it. Everybody wins.
Be bold. Be brave. Pick a sizeable number. Set a timeline. Lead.
Growth Engines: Steely determination drives innovation
In this article, originally featured in Business Leader: The founder of Sheffield-based International Energy Products talks about the company’s big ambitions and how it is achieving them.
Growth Engines: Lead using a simple, big, bold number
In this article, originally featured in Business Leader: Damar Training has one key target: to double the number of apprenticeships it offers in the next 20 months.
3 learnings from trading businesses
This Week@Work there are fundamental lessons we can draw from trading businesses that apply to all businesses: Balancing supply & demand; customer concentration, and managing working capital.
Growth Engines: The manufacturer that is boringly brilliant
In this article, originally featured in Business Leader: The West Yorkshire company breaking the mould of comfort to boost revenue and profit