bizRichard

The first Gold wheelbarrow award goes, without a doubt, to Karin H. of Wood You Like for perseverance and doing what she says she’s going to do. Her wheelbarrow hasn’t stood still for more than a second - to see her impressive list of achievements see her own post.

Starting from scratch is hard at the best of times, but Karin’s determination to try new ideas and approaches to business efficiency and customer acquisition has seen her double turnover and triple profits every year.

A true entrepreneur. A worthy holder of the Gold Wheelbarrow award, I’m sure you will agree.

Indeed, new to the sport of blogging, it is interesting to read the feedback and comments received on the initial posts. Thanks to Kent, Fred, Karin, and others, but the one that really got me thinking this week was from Hugh Hollowell. He said ‘ the idea of personal responsibility is the hardest thing to get across to new business owners’ and quoted “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Hugh, I don’t think it’s the new business owners that are the problem - maybe they lack training and management skills - but it is the longer standing business owners that are the biggest problem. But “why”, is the $64,000 question. And I’ll tell you what I believe is the answer later on.

Deviating for a moment, something I got involved in for a number of years, and loved doing, was helping out a group of schools with their ‘business week’ during which students in their final years thought up and developed business projects, albeit only in theory and ‘in play’. What was so uplifting, and so delightful, was to experience their open, innocent minds. Wild minds that knew no boundaries, minds that roamed into the unknown, and minds that were unconstrained and explored the incredible and the impossible. “Wow”, is all I can say.

These kids (and they were only in their mid teens) were motivated to try anything, passionate about their ideas, and were untainted by bureaucracy and commercial impasse.

Although hard work, it was one of the most ‘refreshing’ weeks of my year.

Now, shut your eyes for a moment, and cast your mind back to when you first started in business. You were enthusiastic, had fresh ideas that you thought no one could resist, and you couldn’t wait to get started every day. You talked passionately about your service, product, or treatment to every prospective customer who dared to come near you. Your passion and sincerity ‘wooed’ them into becoming a true customer. Your customers grew, your business grew, and your sales even began to match your expectations. Things were looking good.

But then, after a year or so things began to get more difficult, and indeed started to go wrong.

And the chances are that you didn’t have the necessary solutions, the skills or the training so that you could put these things right. And that’s not necessarily your fault – it’s both a failure of the educational system and, to a lesser extent, nonsensical bureaucracy, that leaves you, and many others like you, completely disarmed.

As an example, how often have you seen the ‘new’ corner garage being set up a young mechanic who thought he could have a better life running his own business, having been employed the previous 10 years in a large garage or car repair business? Full of enthusiasm, dreams of making more money than ever before, and technically highly competent, the young entrepreneur starts off with a ‘whoosh’. But then, after a while he ends up competing with his rivals on price, working long hours, and forfeiting a life with his family, and realising too late that he has got it wrong. He’s swapped a 7 hour / 5 day week, a reliable income stream, and time with his family and friends, for something he wasn’t expecting. What he’s got instead is a endless 18 hour / 7 day week, fluctuating and unreliable income, and no time with his family and friends. Finally the combined pressures of commerce and family commitment force him out of the game . . . and next time you drive by, he is gone!

So what went wrong? The answer is quite simple. He lost his passion - focussing on servicing his clients beyond their highest of expectations.

Instead of directing his efforts to working on the business strategy he spent his time doing the work the business did (i.e. fixing cars). Customers, once the centre of his attention, began feeling neglected and moved elsewhere. Then, worried about money, having enough customers, and whether his prices were too high, he kept lowering his prices to attract more business. Consequently, to make ends meet, he had to work the huge extra hours that, not only robbed him of his family life but, drained him mentally and physically, until he could no longer find the reason ‘why’. And finally, with all passion for his business gone, he gives up.

And so it is with many businesses. In fact research will tell you that 80% of new businesses will fail within five years of starting. And although these researchers will, quite rightly, point to numerous ‘external’ factors and reason for the failures, I believe the true cause for the final demise of most businesses will, in almost every case, be the entrepreneur’s loss of passion for that business, for whatever reason.

So Hugh, the solution, I believe, to business owners, both new and established, taking responsibility to drive their businesses forward, rests absolutely and proportionately in the degree of passion that they retain for their respective businesses.

Be truly passionate, 210% passionate, about what you do,
or get out and do something else.

Without your passion to drive your enthusiasm and energy, you can never be successful in business. You cannot provide the greatest of value and result to your customers if you are not absolutely passionate about what you do for them. Your profitability and success in business is a consequence of your actions, not the purpose of your actions.

Now, go make some money the smart way!

Doctor Richard C.

Comments are always much appreciated, but please allow me time to reply - I am busy Company Doctor, spending most of my time with my clients.

By way of outline, this site has been set up to help you in the growth and development of your business through the richness of exchanging ideas and experiences with one another. You know the saying “If I give you a penny and you give me a penny, we each still have one penny – but if you give me an idea and I give you an idea, we each have TWO ideas”.

So that’s where I’m coming from!

First up however is – ‘FTI’.

This is something we definitely need to get clear in our heads before we start.

There are literally thousands of books published and articles written that expound the many things you can do in your business to increase either the revenue, or the profits, or both, or improve the cash flow, and more. And I’m sure you too have a number of these books on your shelves - some people have dozens. And the chances are that you will have read most of these. But how much do you remember of the contents?

And more importantly, how many of these ideas have you systematically and ruthlessly implemented in your business? My guess is ‘very few’.

Many of you will come to me with numerous different problems in your business, numerous theories of what you think went wrong, and numerous suggestions as to what you think should be done. You’ve read your books and know the answers.

But, the point I need you to get clear in your head is that it is –

you, yourself, that is responsible for everything in your business

It is only you who can, and needs to, implement the necessary actions to take the business in the direction you want it to go.

The entrepreneur in you will, more than likely, learn something new every day and make decisions everyday. And, if you are like so many business managers I come across, seldom do you actually introduce or implement those wonderful ideas and decisions into your business.

Why?

The phrase ‘FTI’ comes to mind. FTI is the acronym for

“failure to implement”

This ‘in-action’ has been coined in the business world to embrace a critical weakness in our managerial skills. FTI is nothing short of an extreme dose of procrastination (about which I will write at a later date).

Here’s an example.

Imagine, in your garden, you have a wheelbarrow. It is sitting there, in the middle of your lawn. You know it needs moving. But that wheelbarrow will never move UNLESS you do something about it - unless you physically pick it up and push it.

And the same goes for your business also. It will never do anything,

unless you pick it up and push it

Entrepreneurial success comes from determination, organisation and working smart. And the passion and the drive to succeed must come from within you.

And the reason I have chosen this subject for this initial blog article is that, no matter how much valuable and priceless information and ideas I or anyone else provides for you, not a single one is worth anything unless ‘you pick it up and use it’. Used properly, the ideas that we will share with you over the coming months could be priceless —

these ideas could make you many many thousands of pounds

In fact, so keen am I to ensure that you, my readers, implement the ideas we discuss, I’m going to introduce an award for those of you whom I believe have picked up and acted on the available ‘gems’ of information from these pages. This award will be called the

“wheelbarrow award”

Why the ‘wheelbarrow award’ – because, with reference to what I’ve written above, it will be given out only to those that have actually ‘picked up and pushed’, in their business, an idea from this blog.

How it will work is this –

You tell me you’ve done something about implementing, in your business, an idea received from this blog and you will get a ‘green’ wheelbarrow award.

Tell me again when the idea is working for your business (providing some interesting results) and you will get a ‘bronze’ wheelbarrow award.

Do it three times and you will get ‘silver’ wheelbarrow award

Repeat it seven times and you get a ‘gold’ wheelbarrow award.

(see the list of companies awarded the Wheelbarrow below)

After that you will become so ‘addicted’ to implementing good ideas that you won’t need any more support, incentives, awards or encouragement from me! Not only that, you will be driving your business towards more efficiency, higher revenues, greater profits and stronger cash flow – accelerating, in fact, ahead of your competitors to the very top of your field.

Listed below those companies/businesses awarded the green wheelbarrow:

Listed below those companies/businesses awarded the bronze wheelbarrow:

Listed below those companies/businesses awarded the silver wheelbarrow:

Listed below those companies/businesses awarded the gold wheelbarrow:

20.07.07: Karin H of Wood You Like Ltd (Charing - Kent - UK)

Comments are always much appreciated, but please allow me time to
reply - I am busy Company Doctor, spending most of my time with my
clients.

Unless you are a category of business I’ve yet to come across, there is almost no business, I’ve discovered, during my 26 years of working with small to medium-sized enterprises, that will not respond to remedial action as regards those absolutely critical elements in the growth and survival of any enterprise - turnover, profits, and the cash flow.

In fact, if your business is like many others I’ve encountered, it may respond quicker than you expect, possibly the most immediately.

Understand that any enterprise has, inherently, the ability to grow, not just by 10%, 20%, or 40%, but by much more, by 100%, 200%, 400%, and sometimes more still. It is rare, even though you may not understand today how this can be achieved, that your business will not be capable of this degree of sizeable growth. As with the majority of cases, there is a 95% chance that your business can accomplish substantially more market share, more revenues, and more profitability than it is doing right now.

Not only that, but you can establish a significant
improvement fairly rapidly.

Tweaking the business drivers in your organisation, is like driving a car — as you move up through the gears, so you achieve better results at a faster and faster pace and more and more efficiently too.

Let me share a case study with you (although clearly I have changed the details to protect our client’s identity).

A managing director, referred to us by an existing client, phoned in an emotional state late one evening. His bankers had confirmed that afternoon that they would be calling in his company’s loan and overdraft facilities the following week. He had nowhere to turn on for additional funds and was facing the liquidation of a family business he had spent a lifetime building.

But, unlike so many businesses with cash flow problems, debtors were negligible — the business’s sales were mostly ‘cash on delivery’. So the challenge was this - there was no obvious or quick solution for generating the cash now desperately needed.

What’s more, this unfortunate individual had recently used up all his personal equity in a re-mortgage with the bank, the personal funds from which he had already ploughed back into the business to try saving it.

He was, quite literally, between ‘a rock and a hard place’.
You must NEVER find yourself in that place

And, perhaps most alarming, total liabilities weren’t far short of the rapidly declining turnover.

Clearly any remedial action had to come about through a radical change in the business strategy - but it had to be swift too.

SOLUTION: what we did was to formulate new short-term and mid-term strategies, involving sweeping changes to the marketing drivers, and presented these to the bank. On examination, the bank realised the commercial sense made by the revised strategic plan, and agreed to defer their action for three months.

The results of this reformulated strategy and emergency action were rapid and staggering.

Within three months sales had increased markedly, profitability ratios had improved significantly, and cash had started flowing strongly. And, of prime concern to the bank, their facilities were again being properly serviced. Fifteen months on, and the bank’s facilities were almost fully covered, much earlier than ever expected.

The bank could hardly believe that such
a turnaround was possible

But this type and speed of turnaround is virtually predictable when one or more of the critical business drivers I focus on are implemented specifically and applied relentlessly.

Imagine this level of revenue and profits growth,
and cash generation, in your business

Properly structured and managed, there is no reason why you also cannot take your enterprise to the very top of your particular field too.

Further articles will follow on the how and the why - it’s that easy.

Ask me how - it’s that easy.