This week Steve Reid takes readers on the second part of his series on how to start a business.
Image: Be Your Own Boss
In this second part of a four-part series, I am focusing on the place of a viable business model (horse) and being a growth minded entrepreneur (strong jockey).
How can you account for both components?
Understand what the horse is and why it should be healthy
Measuring your business by using a business dashboard
A small business dashboard is a series of charts and graphs that show exactly what’s going on in your business.
This is great to measure your business health and growth.
The dashboard of a modern motor vehicle enables the driver to complete their journey safely, with relatively low stress; while ensuring the vehicle’s long-term sustainability.
A good business dashboard can offer the following benefits:
● Identifying key measures that result in a smoother “journey”.
● Flagging any areas where discrepancies could have a serious effect upon the business (cash flow; pipeline, etc).
● Collating information that you can use and adjust in real time to get to your desired location.
I recommend keeping the number of “dials” low when first building your dashboard.
Here are six you could consider including in your dashboard:
Financial information, such as profits, profit margins and cash balance.
Revenue or sales, showing charts such as sales per day and indicators of your top selling products or services.
Website, showing the number of visitors to your website, Google keywords, etc.
Advertising, to show the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns, such as how many leads or sales each rand spent on advertising is bringing in.
Social media, showing what return you are getting through social media sites.
Customer service, identifying information on responsiveness, complaints and customer feedback.
I make extensive use of Growth Wheel © to help track my business and my client’s business.
Understand who is the jockey and how to grow as a jockey
Own up to the reality that for your business to grow…. you also need to grow as an entrepreneur.
Here are three attributes for you to grow in as the jockey.
● Resilience
What is resilience? It’s the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; it’s mental and emotional toughness. It’s the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; it’s elasticity. It’s the mental reservoir of strength that people are able to call on in times of need to carry them through without falling apart. Dealing with change or loss is an inevitable part of life. At some point, everyone experiences setbacks of varying degrees.
In the last 18 years, I have interacted with over 500 entrepreneurs, business owners and managers within public and private enterprises. Some of these were start-ups, while others had been running their own business or managing a role for quite some time. What I have noticed is that no one is exempt from curve balls; challenges or constraints.
No one is exempt from the effects of stress; or from the need to be vigilant and perseverant. I also noted that not all clients or beneficiaries responded equally to trying times. Some seemed to weather the inevitable storms in a far “cooler” manner. Resilient people harness their strengths and skills differently in order to bounce back from persistent problems.
● Develop a growth mind-set.
How we love the thought of growth. Growth in ourselves, our businesses, our client base, our profitability or our market share.
However, one also needs to consider growing in a “growth mind-set” and not just in methodologies and strategies.
With that in mind, I have selected two quotations from well-known companies or people. I want to focus on certain words or phrases in each of the quotations and expand a little on the growth mind-set addressed.
“Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire” – Arnold H. Glasgow.
Steve Jobs was Apple’s number one salesman and the chief communicator of Apple’s vision. Apple has whole departments of marketing and public relations experts, but Jobs was the person they put on stage to announce new products or technology because no one else could communicate his vision with the same passion. His key success appears to be that before he brought a brilliant product to market, he opened the way for successful engagement by firstly, setting himself on fire.
● Attitude
Consider these few words on attitude by author and speaker Charles Swindoll: “The longer I live, the more I realise the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past … we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so, it is with you, we are in charge of our attitudes.”
What about attitude at work? How important is it to model a positive and engaging attitude?
How about this measure of why customers stop being your customer: 1% die, 3% move away, 5% pick up other friendships, 9% for competitive reasons, and 14% because there is product dissatisfaction. But … 68% quit because of an attitude of indifference towards them by some employee.
So, build a healthy horse and learn to be a resilient jockey. Do all you can to embrace a strong attitude, a resilient approach and a growth mindset.
● Steve Reid runs his own business in support of entrepreneurs, leaders and incubators. This series will be published in this paper as well as its sister papers at the end of every month, both in print (space permitting) and on each paper’s website, where you can also find Part 1: “A roadmap to starting your business”.You can contact Steve at steve@entreprenacity.com