transcend-v2

Starting Your business has never been easier

rod.makin@transcendhcs.com.au (Rod Makin) — Sun, 19 Jun 2022 01:42:32 GMT

Starting Your business has never been easier

Starting a business has never been easier

….remove the stress and shift Your focus to making Your business idea happen
….by taking advantage of FREE government funded support (for eligible businesses)
….from one of our industry experienced advisors who have figured it out so that You do not have to
….enabling You to achieve Your dreams and Your freedom and financial success

As of July 1, 2022, Transcend will be a Federal Government provider for Self-Employment Services - assisting current and aspiring business owners by providing a range of support services to set up or run a successful small business.

Want to learn more..... GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR BUSINESSES (transcendhcs.com.au)

#businessowner #businessownership #smallbusiness #businessgrowth #success #growth #innovation #strategy #recoveryplan #smallbizau #businessowners #businesssupport #mentoring #startup #mentorin g

Support for Micro Businesses - It is now easier than ever to get the Support You need

rod.makin@transcendhcs.com.au (Rod Makin) — Sun, 19 Jun 2022 01:00:05 GMT

It is now easier than ever to get the Support You need

….remove Your stress and shift Your focus to taking Your business to the next level

….by taking advantage of FREE government funded support (for eligible businesses)

….from one of our industry experienced advisors who have figured it out so that You do not have to

….enabling You to achieve Your freedom and financial success

As of July 1, 2022, Transcend will be a Federal Government provider for Self-Employment Services - assisting current and aspiring business owners by providing a range of support services to set up or run a successful small business.

Want to learn more..... https://lnkd.in/dyMHZWW9

#businessowner #businessownership #smallbusiness #businessgrowth #success #growth #innovation #strategy #recoveryplan #smallbizau #businessowners #businesssupport #mentoring #startup #mentoring

How to Create a Business Budget for the Upcoming Year

rod.makin@transcendhcs.com.au (Rod Makin) — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:04:08 GMT

It's that time of year again. A new financial year beckons. It is time to prepare for completing your tax, and......

It is also time to build a business budget for the upcoming year.

Why Do You Need a Business Budget?

Whether you are launching a new business or managing an existing business, a Business Budget (or forecast) can help the likelihood of long-term success for your business. A budget helps you to see past next week and next month to the whole year, and importantly, a business budget helps you to track progress towards achievement of business objectives.

More specifically, a business budget can help your business benefit by:

Making it more efficient
Pointing out funds leftover that you can reinvest
Predicting slow months and keeping you out of debt
Estimating what it will take to become profitable
Providing a window into the future
Helping you keep control of the business

Creating a business budget will make operating your business easier and more efficient. A business budget can also help to make sure that you are spending money in the right places and at the right time to stay out of debt.

How to Create a Business Budget – a Step by Step Guide

The business budgeting process starts with looking backward at your business performance including your past income and expenses. The longer you have been in business, the easier this process will be, as you will have more historical data to look back on as you move to creating your forward-looking budget.

If your business is brand new, however, you might have to do some more extensive research into typical costs within your industry or area in order to gather working estimates for your forecasted finances.

Whether you are gathering information from within your own business or making estimated guesses based on research, there will be some legwork involved in creating your first working budget. That said, you might be surprised just how easy it is to create a business budget when you follow these steps.

Let's break down each step.

Step 1: Confirm Your Plan for the Oncoming Year

The first step is providing a context for your business budget.

Whether you are a new business, or a mature business you need to confirm your business direction for the 12 months, by identifying the key strategies for customer growth, cost reduction or efficiency.

For this step, start with reviewing your historical P&L. This will help you better understand the seasonal ups and downs of your business, which investments in your business are worth repeating, which new investments are going to important, and what you should avoid in the future.

Looking at your historical P&L's, look for these trends:

Big supply or equipment purchases
Seasonal trends due to inclement weather, natural disasters, or economic turmoil
Seasonal trends due to school calendars, holiday patterns, or supply limitations
Profit that is higher than in previous years

When examining your P&L, you are looking for ways to explain the fluctuations and changes in your business.

Then identify strategies for growth, cost reduction or efficiency.

As an example, for customer growth, ask yourself how many customers you will retain, how many new customers will be recipients of your products and services, and importantly what are the sales and marketing costs (ie staff, promotion, etc) for maintaining customers and acquiring new customers.

As an example, for efficiency, ask yourself how you can automate some of your time consuming activities, and importantly what the costs of addressing the automation including technology tools, and or services.

Step 2: Examine Your Revenue

The next step in the budgeting exercise is to build your revenue forecast for the next 12 months.

Based on your strategy for growth, and leveraging your understanding of previous years' performance, forecast the new revenue by month for the 12 months. Add the information as a ‘row’ in a spreadsheet – Revenue by month.

Hint: Be conservative.

In other words, make your income estimates on the low side.

Step 3: Examine Your Costs

The next step in creating a business budget is to add up all of your costs – both fixed and variable.

The term fixed costs applies to any cost that is necessary on a recurring basis for the operation of your business. Fixed costs might occur daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly, so make sure to get as much data as you can.

Examples of fixed costs within your business might include:

Rent
Supplies
Debt repayment
Payroll
Depreciation of assets
Taxes
Insurances

There are some key fixed costs you should review year on year. Note, typically, the largest costs for a small business are Rent, Payroll and Supplies. These need to be constantly reviewed.

Once you have identified your business’ fixed costs, you need to add the information as ‘rows’ in a spreadsheet – Costs (fixed) by type by month.

HINT: Use history as a guide for predicting the future

As you search for the data you need to list out your fixed costs, you might have also noticed there are some variable expenses within your business as well.

Variable expenses are those that change depending on how much you use the service. Many of these are necessary for your business to stay in operation, like utilities.

You will also find expenses in here that are not necessary for the function of your business, but would be nice to have, like education, or extras that can increase profitability. Those are called ‘discretionary expenses’, which you can roll into your variable expenses budget as well.

Some examples of variable expenses are:

Owner’s salary
Replacing old equipment
Office supplies
Professional development
Marketing costs
Utilities

During lean months, you will need to lower your business variable expenses, beginning with discretionary spending. During profitable months when there is extra income, however, you can increase your spending on variable expenses for the long-term benefit of your business.

Hint: Be conservative.

In other words, make your cost estimates on the higher side.

Once you have identified your business’ variable costs, you need to add the information as a ‘row’ in a spreadsheet – Costs (variable) by month.

Now, it is important to note that not all costs are equal. The focus should be on securing your business’ near-term viability and positioning your business for the medium-term.

Putting it another way, be careful when reviewing and potentially cutting costs. Do not remove all of your sales and marketing investment. Ultimately, businesses need to grow by ensuring they have a sales and marketing strategy that increases demand for your products or services.

Step 5: Create a Profit & Loss forecast

Once you have collected all of the above information, it is time to put it all together to create your profit and loss forecast.

Add up all of your income for the month and add up all of your expenses for the month. Then, subtract the expenses from the income and hope you get a positive number at the end.

If you do, you have made a profit! If not, that is a loss—and that is OK, too. Small businesses are not profitable every month, let alone every year. This is especially true when you are just starting out as a business.

The key point is achieving a profit overall for the whole year.

What is a good profit? Profit percentages (or Margins) differ by industry, but greater than 10% is healthy. For industry comparisons, my suggestion is you review Benchmarks by industry | Australian Taxation Office (ato.gov.au) ,

Summary

Few business owners I have met love budgets, finances, and spreadsheets. It is simply not why they got into business ownership. But budgeting is part of life when you own a business. So, knowing step by step how to create a business budget and manage it efficiently will make your job as a business owner just a little bit easier.

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth.

For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au .

How to Improve Your Bottom Line - Strategy 2 - Pricing

Thu, 19 May 2022 04:53:50 GMT

Based on our experience supporting small business owners, in less than an hour, we are confident we can find a 10% improvement to Your bottom line.

What’s Our Secret Sauce?

We ask questions. We listen to Your answers on how and why Your business is not performing. We confirm Your answers with Your financials, and look at the key drivers of Profit:

Cost Structure
Pricing
Lead Conversion
Lead Generation

We then make recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of one or more of these drivers.

Let’s Look at One as an Example – Pricing

A number of the business owners we talk to, when discussing profitability issues, and when asked about the last time they reviewed their pricing typically respond with 'we still have our initial pricing'.

As a business revenue grows, it typically will grow its cost structure. However, it is critical to ensure that any increases in cost structure are properly passed onto clients.

Let’s look at an example…

An Arborist business currently delivering to an average of 5 clients per month
The business was making little or no profit
The Total Expenses (Overheads + Cost of Sales) was greater than 100% ie costs were out waying revenue
The business had not changed pricing since inception
The business changed ONLY the Pricing – adding 25% to each new quote
This generated an additional Revenue of $262.5 K per annum
And, provided a return of an additional $131.25K per annum to the bottom line - a 10% profit increase

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us
Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

How to Improve Your Bottom Line - Strategy 3 - Lead Generation

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 04:37:48 GMT

Based on our experience supporting small business owners, in less than an hour, we are confident we can find a 10% improvement to Your bottom line.

What’s Our Secret Sauce?

We ask questions. We listen to Your answers on how and why Your business is not performing. We confirm Your answers with Your financials, and look at the key drivers of Profit:

Cost Structure
Pricing
Lead Conversion
Lead Generation

We Then Make Recommendations on How to Improve the Effectiveness of One or More of These Drivers.

Let’s Look at One as an Example – Lead Generation

A number of the business owners we talk to, when discussing profitability issues, they identify the requirement for more revenue (ie in their words 'more leads'), and then make the assumption that they need to go straight to initiating a digital campaign to identify new clients. Why? Because everybody else is doing it. Right? No, wrong.

While it is one strategy, there are other strategies available for Lead Generation which can be used individually or in combination, and include:

Leverage your existing clients
Leverage Intermediaries
Walk the pavement
Networking
Digital Marketing

Critical to each of these strategies is knowing Your ideal client. Spending time understanding your target audience will influence how you create your content for marketing, structure your messaging, and importantly the way you need to connect with them.

Let’s Walk Through Each of These Strategies:

Strategy 1 – Leverage Your Existing Clients

The objective of this strategy is to nurture your existing key clients to increase their spend.

This strategy works well for more mature businesses, and is often neglected. Rather than focusing marketing and sales costs purely on generating new business, Your time and dollar investment should be balanced with ‘farming’ existing clients.

Example:

A Construction business wanting to grow its revenues and improve profitability …

The business' key business development strategy was responding to tenders
The business analysed its historical clients by revenue - providing the Top 10 Clients by revenue for last 3 Financial Years
The Top 10 Clients provided on average 80% of the revenue for each year
All the Clients had multiple annual projects that were being responded to reactively
The business reviewed the existing Client list and categorised into A's and B's, assigning an 'account manager' from within the business to manage the A's
Resulted in 'win rate' from tenders going from 30% to 50%, with minimal pressure on rates
And ultimately, while maintaining revenues, increased profit by more than10%

This strategy also works well in hospitality, by building loyalty programs (eg: for coffee) or by upselling (eg: buy a sandwich and a drink as a ‘product’)

Strategy 2 – Leverage Intermediaries

The objective of this strategy is to partner with an organisation(s) who has a client list aligned to Your ideal target client.

Example:

A Suit Tailor wanting to grow its revenues…

One of the ideal target clients for this business was someone wanting a suit to get married
As we all know, there is a whole industry aligned to this target client
The business identified providers within his geography and then formed partnerships with wedding planners, wedding venues and wedding providers (eg: jewellers, celebrants, caterers and florists)
In some cases the partnerships were mutual referrals, in other cases there was revenue sharing
These providers were generating an average of 1 sale per month
Increasing revenues, and profit

This strategy can also be used in the form of a Joint Venture (JV). A JV involves two or more businesses who decide to form a partnership to share markets or endorse a specific product or service to their client base, usually under a revenue sharing arrangement.

Strategy 3 – Walk the Pavement

The objective of this strategy is to develop interest of potential new customers.

This is an old style lead generation strategy and it still works.

Example:

A Café wanting to start its business.…

Café business was situated in a large regional centre
Majority of customers were business people working within close proximity
Developed flyers to introduce café and key offerings
Handed out flyers to passer-bys at key locations including train station, outside commercial buildings, foot traffic outside café
Increased number of customers per day and coupled with bundling of products was able to increase revenues and profit

Strategy 4 – Networking

The objective of this strategy is to develop referrals through a networking or business group, or by developing connections who can introduce you to potential clients.

The critical success factor here is knowing your target client and developing relationships with connections who can introduce you to your target.

Networking in particular can be very resource intensive, and its effectiveness may also be limited by the audience. Networking groups typically have an annual cost of membership, and importantly can have a huge impact on your time having to attend weekly forums. They also may not give you access to the type of clients you want.

Strategy 5 – Digital Marketing

The objective of this strategy is to develop potential conversations with target clients through digital channels.

First thing to note. There are many digital channels for your business to potentially leverage and include website, email, social media, and SEO.

While critical to all lead generation strategies, it is critical to understand your objectives, budget, target client and the channel(s) best suited to connect with them. It is also critical to have identified how your business will manage leads generated by these channels and how you will manage the lead conversion process.

Example:

A Recruitment business wanting to re-launch and grow its revenues…

Business had a large database of 2500 previous candidates and clients
Based on this database, developed an email campaign to both previous candidates and clients
Using LinkedIn and a specific target customer profile, developed a marketing campaign to new prospective clients
Grew business in 9 months to average 20 jobs per month
Increasing revenues, and profit

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

How to Improve Your Bottom Line - Strategy 4 - Cost Structure

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 21:56:38 GMT

Based on our experience supporting small business owners, in less than an hour, we are confident we can find a 10% improvement to Your bottom line.

What’s Our Secret Sauce?

We ask questions. We listen to Your answers on how and why Your business is not performing. We confirm Your answers with Your financials, and look at the key drivers of Profit:

Cost Structure
Pricing
Lead Conversion
Lead Generation

We then make recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of one or more of these drivers.

Let’s Look at One as an Example – Cost Structure

It is critical that as a small business owner You are aware of and managing Your costs - both fixed and variable.

It is also critical that Your cost structure is set up so as to provide flexibility and ability to adapt to whatever the future entails.

Recommendations would be:

Be on top of your cost structure at all times
Look to reduce and lock in any fixed costs
Look to defer any discretionary spend
And if you are reducing costs, make sure that the focus is on securing your business’ near-term viability

The term fixed costs applies to any cost that is necessary on a recurring basis for the operation of the business.

Examples of fixed costs within the business might include:

Rent
Supplies
Debt repayment
Payroll
Taxes
Insurances

Typically, the largest costs for a small business are Rent, Payroll, and Materials / Supplies. At this particular time, these need to be constantly reviewed and where possible reduced.

Examples of potential actions to reduce fixed costs:

Have a conversation with your landlord - this could give you the opportunity to reduce your rent
Review your staffing models to reduce your payroll costs by:

changing the mix of permanents and casuals
optimising staffing based on down times

3. Review opportunities to reduce staffing, and as a result payroll costs, by automating key business processes

4. Work with suppliers to reduce your supplier costs

lock in a more favourable price, or
look at alternate suppliers

Variable expenses are those that change depending on how much you use the service. Many of these are necessary for your business to stay in operation, like utilities.

You will also find expenses that are not necessary for the function of your business, but would be nice to have, like education, or extras that can increase profitability. Those are called ‘discretionary expenses’, which you can roll into your variable expenses budget as well.

Some examples of variable expenses are:

Owner’s salary
Replacing old equipment
Office supplies
Professional development
Marketing costs

During these times, you will need to lower your business variable expenses, beginning with discretionary spending.

Now, it is important to note that not all costs are equal. The focus should be on securing your business’ near-term viability and positioning your business for the medium-term.

Putting it another way, be careful when reviewing and potentially cutting costs. Do not remove all of your sales and marketing investment. Ultimately, your business needs to grow out of this situation by ensuring it has a sales and marketing strategy that increases demand for your products or services.

How to Improve Your Bottom Line - Strategy 1 - Lead Conversion

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 05:16:31 GMT

Based on our experience supporting small business owners, in less than an hour, we are confident we can find a 10% improvement to Your bottom line.

What’s Our Secret Sauce?

We ask questions. We listen to Your answers on how and why Your business is not performing. We confirm Your answers with Your financials, and look at the key drivers of Profit:

Cost Structure
Pricing
Lead Conversion
Lead Generation

We then make recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of one or more of these drivers.

Let’s Look at One as an Example – Lead Conversion

A number of the business owners we talk to, when discussing profitability issues, believe they need to promote their business more to generate more Leads which will translate into additional Revenue and increased Profit. That is their answer.

They are right. But is it the most efficient way to get more customers? While more Leads should convert to more Revenue, they come at a Cost – for promotion.

What if You were to be able to convert more of the Leads You are already getting at minimal or no additional Cost? Let’s look at an example…

A Real Estate business currently delivering 240 leads per annum – an average of 20 per month
The business was currently converting 1 in 5 leads to customer – an average of 4 per month
The business changed ONLY the conversion rate from 20% to 25% by improving the way they interacted with prospects and the information they provided – to an average of 5 per month
This resulted in an additional 1 customer per month at $9600 per purchase
Generating additional Revenue of $115.2 K per annum at 10% margin
Resulting in an additional $11,520 per annum to the bottom line

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

Aligning Personal Goals to Build the Business and Life You Want and Deserve

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 06:29:09 GMT

Do you know a John? Or, is John you?

John is the owner of a small business. It is not important what industry. But as the owner of the business, John has been deeply involved in the day-to-day running of his business.

One day John wakes up, the question many business owners face suddenly hits him like a ton of bricks…

‘How do I get off the merry-go-round? I have been doing and doing and doing

for more than 20 years. I feel like I am chained to my business.’

Or, it could be…

‘How do I get my life back? I have been working 70 hours a week for years, and I am not seeing the return for all my efforts.’

If I were to challenge John to think beyond the day to day running of the business, I would ask him...

‘What kind of life do you want to live?’

‘What is your ideal life – income and freedom? For you and your family?

Why are these questions important?

Tying business success to a business owner’s personal goals gives purpose to their efforts and passion they invest in the business. But all too often the dream of being your own boss comes by way of taking risks, working long hours and making sacrifices.

In their pursuit of business success, many business owners simply do not look up – they continue going around in circles on the merry-go-round, burying their heads in work for too long, forgetting to see how their role needs to evolve. They neglect executing strategically in order to unchain themselves from the tactical roles consuming their time. Most importantly they neglect themselves and the people close to them.

There Is Another Way

Here Are Nine Personal Goals Every Business Owner Should Explore to Build the Business and Life They Want and Deserve:

1. Leadership and Values

Rather than using a textbook definition, ask yourself: What kind of leader do I hope to be based on my values? What kind of leadership do I want to bring to the workplace based on my experiences, upbringing and beliefs?

2. Wealth

Building wealth goes far beyond making money. What does your wealth translate into? Tangible categories like financial security, philanthropy and what you will leave for the next generation are rewards on the other side of wealth.

3. Time

Make every minute count. Are you spending your time in ways that make you feel fulfilled or frustrated? What do you love doing? How much time do you hope to devote to family, friends, hobbies, work and other interests?

4. Lifestyle

Do not hold back. What does your ideal lifestyle look like? Are you hitting the gym, enjoying an evening concert, attending classes, reading books? What in your life is missing? What is holding you back?

5. Workplace Culture

Business owners influence workplace culture. So be intentional about it. If assisting those less fortunate is important to you, then transform your personal goal of supporting others through some form of volunteering.

6. Your Passions

We have all heard we should follow our passions, but what does this really mean? Dig deep and remember what you loved in years past: teaching, travel, writing, creating art or helping others.

7. Customer Relationships

Do you want more interaction with customers or less?

8. Exit Strategy/Succession

Begin with the end in mind and then work backwards. Involve your key advisers.

9. Extreme Achiever Dreams

Being the first with a patent or climbing Mount Everest or solving a global dilemma are high-achieving goals. What big mark do you want to make on the world, and how can your business help you achieve it?

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

What Is the One Change That Will Make the Most Difference to Your Business?

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 05:45:21 GMT

How Often Are You Sitting Back Away From the Day to Day Running of Your Small Business?

Sitting back away from the day to day demands of your business, and regularly evaluating its performance is good practice. Even if your business is going well, there is always room for improvement. More than ever in these unprecedented times, you need to review your business to ensure business recovery and continuity.

So, what is the ONE change that will make the most difference to your business and how can you identify it? Here are some questions to get you thinking about the change you may want to make:

What are you worrying about?

If you think about what you are worrying about this is likely to be an area that may need changing e.g. you may be worrying about your sales, your relationship with a key supplier or your cash flow position.

What is stopping you moving forward?

There may be things in your business that you feel if they were fixed will make a huge difference e.g. process inefficiencies, a particular report that you cannot get from your accountant or not enough staff.

If you could change one thing right now, what would it be?

Answering this question straight away should give you the key change as it is likely to be your biggest frustration e.g. start selling online, increase prices or add a new service.

What are your customers talking to you about?

Customer feedback is always a good indicator of what is happening in your business so what are your customers telling you e.g. poor quality products, slow deliveries or services that they would like you to offer.

What are other businesses doing that you are not?

Being alert to the competition, as well as seeing what other businesses are doing and what is happening in the market place can alert you to changes you need to make e.g. special offers, using new marketing tactics or introducing new more efficient systems.

If everything was how you want it to be, what would be different to now?

Thinking about this will give you ideas as to what is not happening now that you want to be e.g. bigger offices, expanding your sales area or getting rid of unprofitable customers.

What could you do to stand out from the competition?

Identifying your point of difference or unique selling point can help you to market your business better and to get noticed e.g. you may have a product that no one else offers, have specialist knowledge or can deliver goods quicker.

What are your staff telling you needs changing?

Listening to your staff and understanding their frustrations can tell you where changes need to be made e.g. it takes too long to process an order, they don't know how to do something or they are getting lots of returns of a particular product line.

What areas of your business do you feel less comfortable with and why?

Understanding which areas of the business you are less comfortable with may highlight parts of your business that you are neglecting and need help with e.g. you may not like presenting to clients, may feel you do not understand marketing or you are struggling with the financial side.

What are you not doing that you feel you should be doing?

Often we keep doing what we have always done but there may be things that we are not doing that could make all the difference e.g. you may be marketing to potential new clients but not marketing to your existing and previous customers, you may be issuing invoices but not chasing outstanding invoices or you may be doing things that you don't need to do but not answering important emails and phone calls.

It is highly likely that by answering these questions, you will generate a list of potential changes.

I strongly suggest you prioritise this list down to ONE single change, so that you can invest your time and money to this change.

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

Tips to Understand and Manage the Financial Health of Your Business

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 06:00:16 GMT

Are You Getting the Financial Return for the Hours Per Week You Are Working?

Do You Understand What Your Financials Are Telling You About Y our Business Health?

Do You Review Your Business Financials on at Least a Monthly Basis?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘No’, then you should review this webinar.

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au

How to Scale Your Business

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 06:57:20 GMT

What Happens if Your Business Growth Objectives Come to Fruition?

Will Your Business Operations (or Delivery Engine) Be Able to Deliver the Increased Demand?

Many business owners are actually scared of aggressive growth, because of their concerns with their ability to deliver the increased product or service demand. Others are unclear as to how to prepare for this growth. And, in some cases this reticence results in a reluctance to push for growth.

So, how do we give you, the business owner, the confidence to aggressively grow your business?

The answer lies in focusing on scaling your business, rather than just growing your business.

What does this mean?

If a business owner simply continues trying to increase their revenue by adding more resources with a corresponding increase in costs, their growth is likely to stagnate. The business will get to a point where there is a realisation that the effort to grow simply is not worth the financial gain. And, if not done right, the risk is that bringing in new customers without the right delivery engine will end up with dissatisfied customers.

What a business owner needs instead is a strategy for scaling that focuses on increasing revenue while also increasing efficiency. In the scaling scenario, it will be worth the effort to reach more customers since the business will be expending a comparatively low amount and therefore making increasingly larger amounts of profit. The business owner will be increasing the businesses value by increasing the efficiency with which they can bring in new revenue. And, the business owner will also have confidence in fulfilling his /her customer needs by having a delivery engine capable of delivering the increased demand.

As an example, a food manufacturing business has grown its revenue consistently over three years. With plans to double this revenue growth in the next 12 months, the business owner has recognised the need to proactively look at how to achieve efficiencies to deliver the product for the potential increased demand.

With a plan to double his sales, the business owner has asked himself:

How can I reduce the cost of raw materials? The business has, in fact, identified an alternate supplier which provides its raw materials at 50% of the cost of the current supplier.
How can I reduce the cost of packaging? The business is in discussions with alternate packaging suppliers which have the potential to reduce their current cost by at least 60%.
How can I reduce the cost of, and increase the speed of manufacturing? The business has investigated the use of machinery to both speed up and reduce the people costs of manufacturing.

These efficiency strategies are looking at what it will take to deliver their product for the increased demand. These strategies and the related actions are providing the business owner the confidence to continue with its aggressive marketing and sales campaign.

So, What Can You as a Business Owner, Do You Scale Your Business?

The following approach is aimed at helping you, the business owner, to understand how to scale your business operations:

Step 1: Start With the End in Mind

The starting point is to define your business’ growth objective, or a related growth milestone.

For example, your current business operations (your delivery engine) can comfortably deliver 20,000 units per month, or it can deliver services to 4 new customers per year.

But, is your business operations able to scale their delivery to your growth objective - 40,000 units per month, or 10 new customers per year?

Alternatively, as a startup business, your initial milestone is to deliver product or services to 3 customers. Is your business operations able to meet the delivery to the milestone?

Step 2: Understand the Readiness of Your Business Operations to Support the Growth Objective, or Milestone

Your business operations comprises a number of core capabilities – materials supply, delivery / manufacturing processes and supporting systems.

For each of these capabilities, a business owner needs to ask the following questions:

Can the capability deliver your growth aspirations in its current form?
If not, what needs to change for that capability to be able to deliver to your growth aspirations?

Material

The capability to supply the materials to meet demand

Product Business

Do your current suppliers have the capability to supply the required materials?
Do you need alternate or additional suppliers to supplement supply?

Services Business

Does your current approach to sourcing people have the capability to supply the right people when you need them?
Do you need alternate or additional approaches to supplement the supply?

Delivery / Manufacturing

The capability to Deliver / Manufacture the product or service

Can your current manufacturing capability produce the increase product product demand efficiently, at the right price and at the right quality?
What needs to be done to ensure you are able to deliver consistent and quality services?
Are your core delivery / manufacturing processes delivered through a majority of manual work? Are there opportunities for automation by systems?
Do you have the right People – skills and experience?
Do you have the right numbers of People – do you need to hire additional staff, do you need to add an additional shift?

Step 3: in Parallel to Your Strategies for Growth, Develop Your Capability

If you wait until your business growth objective, or milestone, is a reality it will be too late.

As a business owner, having identified what needs to happen to be ready for the growth, you have time to prepare yourself, your business and your investment priorities.

So, as well as a plan to grow your revenue, the business needs to have a plan which actions getting your business operations ready.

For businesses, the path to success is not found in simply growing but in scaling your business. Scaling a business requires a whole new level of skills and systems that many business owners cannot fully anticipate.

It requires the business owner to work ON their business on a regular basis, not just IN their business working on day to day issues.

Would it be worth a 1 hour chat to understand how to add at least 10% to your bottom line? Contact us

Transcend is a team of experienced business coaches supporting You and Your business' growth. For more information refer to www.transcendhcs.com.au