Last weekend I attended a retreat with a business group I belong to. We were very fortunate to have a session facilitated by Jol Hunter from Grant Thornton.
The most meaningful part of the 24 hours we spent together was something all of us as business owners want to know about and that is how to grow our business and make more money.
Jol identified 4 essential elements to making more money:
- Know Your Business
- Know Its Value Creation
- Involve Your People
- Be Disciplined in Execution
Here are the key points to consider in order to be certain we are on top of the 4 keys above.
- Know the formula for making money in your business. For example, in a service based business that might be ((# of hours x hourly rate)-expenses)/# of employees = profit/employee
- Work the formula relentlessly
- Have a plan to improve the current performance of the formula. For example, will reducing expenses have a positive impact on the profit per employee?
- Have a plan to make the formula produce more tomorrow. What should the formula look like in 2 or 3 years? More hours? Higher hourly rate?
- Execute on your plan
- Know where the value is created in your business. What is your distinctive advantage? Why do people buy from you?
- Work deliberately to increase your value-creating ability. Enhance the reason people buy from you
- Ask your people how they would score your business. There are several key questions to ask including – Do I know what is expected of me at work? Do I have the opportunity to do my best every day? Do I receive recognition regularly for doing good work? Do my opinions seem to count? (Wow, my last employer had it all wrong – no wonder I started my own business!)
- Ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how organized are you? (this point was music to my ears!)
- Have you analyzed how you spend your time? (Yes, I have – whew!)
- Is it time to bring on more support so you can truly spend time on the important things that will ensure you grow your business and make more money? (Yes, it is!)
And, after we’ve done all of the above, Jol says we need to ask ourselves, “How can I make sure my business is ready for the future”?
Holy cow, don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot of work to do!
