How to have confidence in business when doubts are creeping in

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Laura Humphreys

One of my favourite all time quotes is this one by Henry Ford:

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

And I always say to the business owners I work with on their confidence in business, ‘what you say to yourself and believe is the single most powerful force we will have to work with’.

So yes I’m a big believer the power of self belief, and how damaging to your progress in life and business negative beliefs can be.

Of course, many of our negative beliefs about ourselves or our societal circumstances are ingrained from an early age. If someone tells you that you are stupid when you are young, you may grow up to believe this on some unconscious level, even when the evidence in front of you says otherwise. Or if someone tells you that money is evil, you may find this belief is impacting on your perspective of how successful you will allow your business to be.

Right now, we are confronted with a very uncertain world ahead…

Covid19 and the enforced global lock down of our people, our borders and our economies will have a huge impact. We can’t even say how this will play out for sure, but we are pretty certain that we will be heading into a time of recession and hardship for many of our citizens.

So now more than ever is the time to ensure you have a good relationship with your beliefs about yourself and your ability to lead you business, your family and your own well-being through whatever lies ahead.

Here’s an exercise that can really help ensure you have the confidence in business you need to succeed in the new landscape.

It’s called Creating a Positive Mantra and it goes like this…

Step 1. On a piece of paper draw a line down the middle so you have two columns. On one side write the heading ‘Negative’ and on the other side write ‘Positive’.

Step 2. On the negative side list all of the current fears you have about yourself or your business. Just listen to whatever comes into your head and write it down without judgement. For example, you might write “I doubt myself and my ability to come through this” or “I’m scared my business won’t generate enough income” or “I’m scared I might get sick”.

Step 3. On the positive side, write down the exact opposite to the fears/negatives on the other side. For example, on the opposite side to “I doubt my ability to come through this” you could write “I have faith in my ability to come through this”.

Step 4. Now select the two or three most prominent fears and take their opposite positives to make a sentence. Eg. “I believe in myself and have total faith in my ability to generate income and keep myself healthy”.

Step 5. Shorten the sentence into your mantra – something that you can say to yourself easily and remember. For example, “I believe I will thrive and everything will be better than before”.

Step 6. Make it stick. This mantra needs to overcome any other thoughts and beliefs running round in your head. You have to ingrain it…

Write it out 100 times!
Write it on post its and leave where you can see it
Use it as a meditation mantra, or chant as you go to sleep at night

This exercise doesn’t take long but it is really powerful. It’s all about re-programming your fears and negative thoughts so that your confidence in business and in yourself are strong when you tackle challenges.

This and other exercises can be found the 3 module mini course, called Thriving through Crisis, which I created during lock down. Click below to access it.

Thriving through Crisis Mini Course – find out more.

Let me know how you get on. Be strong!

Laura

Surviving Covid19 – My 10 Step Business Survival Mantras

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Laura Humphreys

Apologies for adding another blog to the hundreds out there about Covid19, we’re all both sick of it and addicted to it at the same time right?

This is an unprecedented time and feels like we’ve all gone to war, which I suppose we have really.

And like war, it’s very frightening, everything changes, fear is rampant and the unknown makes it impossible to plan the future.

So I just wanted to share an email I sent my clients this week with thoughts I’ve had about what I’m going to do to get through this and come out on top, in the hope that maybe it will help you too.

This is what I’m telling myself – a 10 point mantra for surviving Covid19 :

Get my fear in check.
1. Have faith. I feel my faith (in a greater power, myself, the universe… I’m not really sure which) is being called upon and I have to trust that it is all going to be OK.
2. Have courage. I feel frightened, but I know I am strong and I will get through this, as will my family, my friends, my clients and my colleagues.
3. Be vulnerable. It’s OK to be scared and it’s OK to admit that I don’t always understand what’s going on or how to help myself or others fully but I’ll keep communicating, keep sharing and I’ll be OK.
4. Take comfort from the fact that we are all in the same boat – the financial system has broken and the domino effect impacts everyone – businesses, investors, employers, employees – everyone – I’m not alone.

Add value
5. Look at the situation, what is happening, what do people need and how can I best take what I have to offer to help the most? Think help not panic.
6. Don’t worry about the money, focus on adding value and coming from an authentic position of helping others first.
7. Trust that if I add value and help others, everything else will look after itself.

Look after people
8. That’s my family, my friends and my clients (all of who are like family and friends to me anyway), my tenants, my neighbours, my community… I’m going to embrace the humanity in this situation and throw myself into this with compassion and a sense of humour too.

Look after my brand
9. That’s my business brand and my personal brand- How I behave during this time will say a lot about me and my business.

Be creative
10. Now’s the time to re-invent myself and harness my creativity to see what’s possible and come out with a new way of looking things that’s better than before.

I’m here for you…

As part of this plan for me I want to be here for you in every way I can. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen (some virus just stole my crystal ball), but I have a great brain, I’m creative, I’m smart, I know some stuff about business and I’m full of hope and optimism… I’m a great ear in a crisis too!

I know at the moment you’ll be in full survival mode, dealing with the very real issues of people, financial fall out, and feelings of overwhelm as you try to get these things done as wisely as you can. I hope you have good financial and HR support around you – if not, please reach out to me and I’ll either help you myself or get you the help you need. Contact me any time!

Once this in place, I’m here to help you work on the courage, the creativity and the re-invention. So please, please, please call on me. I think this is the time for short zoom meetings – as often as you want. I’ll be creating a calendar link for business owners to work with me on creative approaches to work on the re-invention coming out of this. If you are keen to be included in this, just email me laura@liber8u.com.

If you can afford to pay me that’s awesome, I appreciate it with big gratitude. If you can’t, that’s fine too. We can talk about that after it’s all over. You can pay me when you start making loads of money again (and I know you will!).

Let’s make this crisis into something we can be proud of.

Keep in touch… I’m here!

Kia kaha!

Roaring out of a recession – Learn what the 9% of Post Recession Winners did right

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Laura Humphreys

How to be a post-recession winner …

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who woke up on Monday morning with no small amount of fear in my belly about what’s coming next, right?

A pandemic that closes entire countries is frightening enough. And now we are heading into a recession of unknown proportions too. It’s bloody scary for everyone. As business owners we really do feel like we’ve walked into a scene from Alice in Wonderland, where everything is surreal and nothing is the same as it was only a moment ago.

So what do we do?

How do we survive a recession, and come out the other end stronger than ever?

I have some of my own opinions – but this morning as I sat in bed not sure I really wanted to face this week, my opinions didn’t seem enough. I wanted to find out more about companies that had not only successfully survived a recession, but also come out the other side on top.

So I started to google…

And an hour and a half later, still in my pyjamas, I found this article in Harvard Business Review … which I think is the best article of all about how to survive a recession because it’s research based (following 4,700 companies through three recessions), not opinion based.

Do you want to know what the 9% of companies who absolutely flourish after a recession do?

Read this article – click here – to find out.

And then commit to being a “post-recession winner”.

“The companies most likely to outperform their competitors after a recession are pragmatic as William James defined the term: “The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.” The CEOs of pragmatic companies recognize that cost cutting is necessary to survive a recession, that investment is equally essential to spur growth, and that they must manage both at the same time if their companies are to emerge as post-recession leaders.”

This is a time to call upon wisdom not panic. To be pragmatic not too defensive or aggressive. Can this be you?

This morning I made a commitment to be the most useful that I can possibly be to business owners through what will no doubt be a roller coaster ride of scream worthy proportions for many of us. So I’m going to continue to explore and share winning strategies and tactics, and create content to inspire and cheer, as well as empathise. I want to help you be a pragmatic leader that sees opportunity in the chaos.

If you’d like to hear more from me and be part of the wisdom not panic tribe… feel free to email me laura@liber8u.com and tell me what support you could really do with right now.

Let’s keep positive and stay together through this!

Advisory Board Tip Series 2 – Why have an advisory board?

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Laura Humphreys

Why should you have an Advisory Board?

Good question. And an important one to know the answer to before you to go to the trouble and expense of forming one!

Bring back the joy!

An Advisory Board is there to help you grow more efficiently and with more confidence. They’re there to encourage you, to challenge you, to support you and bring more joy back into your business.

Get the support you need.

Growing a business by yourself can be quite hard. When you have an Advisory Board who care passionately about your business and want you to succeed, it should be an uplifting experience.

You just don’t know what you don’t know!

It’s naive of a business owner to be arrogant enough to think that they know everything. The whole purpose – the why – of having an Advisory Board is that they will challenge your thinking and bring a perspective you hadn’t thought of before. And they will bring experience that you haven’t yet had, particularly in your industry or part of the growth plan you are trying to achieve.

A worthwhile investment

In my first business I invested $24,000 per annum in two external advisors – in my second year of business, that was all my profit! But it was the best decision I ever made. They gave me the confidence and encouragement to grow, they were there when times were tough and they never stopped believing in me. Don’t underestimate the return on investment of paying for good external advice.

If you’d like to know more about how an Advisory Board could work for you… feel free to email me laura@liber8u.com

Happy growing!

Advisory Board Video Tip Series – Tip 1. Understand what a Advisory Board is

Posted on February 19, 2020 by Laura Humphreys

Have you been wondering if it’s time to look at an Advisory Board for your business? Or has someone else suggested you should have one, but you don’t really know where to start? I work with business owners every day and often get asked about the need for an Advisory Board. I think its a great idea but only if you do it properly and at the right time for your business.

So how do you do it properly?

I thought I’d share my advice in the form of a video tip series.

Tip 1 – Understand what an Advisory Tip is

An Advisory Board is a small but perfectly formed group of people who come together to add value to your business growth plans.

There are a few clues in the above statement:

Small. You don’t want a committee of people with so many perspectives it confuses you. I think yourself plus 2 or 3 others is ample
Perfectly formed. Choose very carefully who you have on board – choose people who have proven experience in both business and in the particular areas you want to grow in. For instance if your growth strategies are likely to include exporting, then someone with exporting experience could add great value.
Business growth plans. The right time to bring together an Advisory Board is when you are in a growth phase and have a clear idea of where you want to take the business and ready for the right help to implement your plans – not when you are just starting out or if you are unclear where you want to take the business.

I’ll be sharing all 7 video tips as a blog but if you want to fast track to the full series, just go to https://liber8yourbusiness.com/advisory-board/

And of course feel free to email me at laura@liber8me.com if you have any questions or want to talk more about help with forming an Advisory Board.

Happy growing!

How to create the killer business plan you’ll actually follow this year

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Laura Humphreys

Too often annual business plans are so wordy they get stuck in a drawer, or there are too many things that need attending to that the business owner gets overwhelmed and struggles to execute the plan. Or the ideas are so hidden in words that they get lost. The reality is that 12 months is a short period of time and you can’t execute everything that you want to do… so you have to be selective. Set yourself up for success, not for failure.

Every year, as well as putting out fires, solving problems, managing staff and clients, you need to be executing key strategies that will help you get towards your long term vision faster. The following article and exercise will help you create a quick business plan that your whole team will understand and help you execute.

The 2 Page Business Plan aims to uncover the really important objectives that will drive your success in the coming financial year. The idea is to identify the most important goals for the year – the ones that will make the biggest impact towards your long term goals as well as move you forward in the short term.

It includes three key sections:

1. The Core Business Drivers – what are the most important objectives for your business this year? With specific targets added (how to quantify these drivers)
2. The Key Strategies that will turn these objectives to reality
3. The Action/Project Plan for each strategy – the things you have to do, by when and with what resource in order to execute the strategy.

Note:

Your 2 page business plan sits alongside your annual budget. Your budget should outline your profit goal for the year, your planned expenses and the income targets you need to achieve that profit.

Then your 2 Page Business Plan outlines how you are going to achieve this.

EXERCISE

Compete the following:

1. Your Core Business Drivers

What are the most important objectives for this year? The key focus areas that will drive the business forward and ensure you achieve financial objectives?

Limit this to 3 or 5 objectives that will make a real difference.

Example:

Increase Membership
Retain and increase value of existing members
Grow partner network
Decrease dependency on me

2. Specific targets

Underneath each ‘driver’ put a specific target

Example:

Increase Membership
- 60 new member firms on this year
Retain and increase value of existing members
- Increase value of membership based by 40%
Grow partner network
- Bring on 4 new suppliers this year

Decrease dependency on me
- Hire part time telemarketer and book keeper

3. Key Strategies

Commit to 2 to 5 key strategies that you believe will achieve your core drivers

Example:

Increase membership:
- New brand launch PR
- Lapsed leads campaign
- Events programme
- Partner collaboration programme
- Content marketing

4. Create a project plan for each of the strategies to make it a reality:

Resources – what needs to happen, who will do it, how much?

Timeframes – when and how long will it take?

Example:

Lapsed Leads campaign:
- Write and send new brand email (date)
- Prepare scripts and train telemarketer follow up (date)
- Get appointments (on-going)
- Use new sales presentation to convert

Follow the steps above and you will have a plan you can stick on your wall and see every day, not in your drawer gathering dust. Hope you find this useful.

Happy growing!

PS. For more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs

The Pillars to Successful Business Growth Strategy Series. Pillar 3 – Delivery

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Laura Humphreys

If you’ve been following my 6 Pillars to Business Success Series, you’ll know that the first two pillars require you to have a product that matches a need in the market and is unique enough to carve a niche in that market and you need think about and plan for a business model that will enable you to scale and grow beyond the early days of dependency on you.

The third pillar is about ‘delivery’ – the systems and processes you have in place to ensure you can consistently deliver on the promise of your product again and again.

Delivery of expectation

Delivery is really about expectation. When you market your product and service well (we’ll get to the sales and marketing in the next blog), you create an expectation in the minds of your customer. This expectation carries across a number of areas:

Quality and consistency of product

Customers have an idea of what it is they are going to receive and an expectation of the quality they will experience – not just the first time they buy from you, but every time they buy from you. So your company’s ability to deliver a quality experience every single time is critical. As you grow, you have to be able to keep up the quality, regardless of size and quantity.

Quality and consistency of service

Your customers will also have an expectation of the level of service they receive – which will be bench marked against your previous service levels (you are expected to keep these up as you grow) and also against their experience with other providers. Each industry will have a standards benchmark that the market expects all players to deliver on. In an ideal world, you’ll know what this is and ensure your company delivers better service than your competitors – each and every time.

Efficiency and timeliness

How well and how timely you are on the delivery of their expectation is also a critical factor. You can have the best solution in the world but if it doesn’t arrive in time to meet your customer’s need, they won’t be happy with it.

A quick example – I ordered a mermaid blanket (yes really) online for my daughter as a Christmas santa present. It was a US based site, and international delivery was within 3 weeks. This was early November. There was plenty of time for it to arrive by Christmas. By early December it still hadn’t arrived. When I emailed, I was sent a link to a parcel tracking site. This was all in Chinese so I couldn’t make any sense of it. Further emails got no reply. A week out from Christmas it still hadn’t arrived, so I found another mermaid blanket on a NZ gift site, with guaranteed delivery before Christmas. This one arrived within 2 days of ordering. Then the original one arrived too – a few days before Christmas.

My daughter was thrilled to get two mermaid blankets from Santa. I was not so delighted. The original company continues to market to me, as I’m clearly now on their database. But I will never buy from them again. They had the superior blanket quality wise, but they let me down on the timeliness of delivery, and also their lack of reply to my emails and their lack of concern about their tracking information being in Chinese. They hadn’t set their distribution systems up well enough to match their delivery promise, they oversold and under delivered to me and many others I’m sure.

Delivery efficiencies

A key thing to consider about delivery is how efficiently your company can continually meet the expectations of your customers. As you grow it gets harder and harder to keep up the quality and control the costs involved to do this. You have to hire more people and invest in more infrastructure. Your costs go up and before you know it, your income is growing but your profits are shrinking.

So how do you grow and continue to deliver on customer expectations?

The answer to that question lies with these 3 things: systems, team, training.

1. Systems

You must have systems for everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. From how a customer is greeted when they first contact you or how the floor of the warehouse is cleaned to how your product is packaged, to how it is disbributed, how you present, how you communicate, how you deal with a complaint, how you do anything at all.

According to the online Business Dictionary, a system is defined as:

A set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem.

Systems will set you free. And simply cannot be avoided.

To create a system, first prove that a process works (by trialling it for a while), then document it thoroughly step by step, and then ensure everyone in your company knows how to follow the process. One of my fellow mentors and author Mike Brunel, tells the story of how he started what became a $300 million company by following his business partner around with a dictaphone and then wrote up everything he did – this created a system they were able to sell to others all over the world. In their case, the system became the product because they found a way to do something better than anyone in their industry.

Put all of your systems into one ‘manual’ – which can be all stored online or delivered as a lovely glossy ‘welcome’ piece when new team members join. Let this become your manifesto … the ‘how we do things here’ guide to consistent delivery for your company.

Important note: Two of the areas you need systems for – to ensure you can afford to grow – are your sales and marketing, and your financial reporting. We talk more of these in future blogs in the series, but for now, be sure to build systems that enable you to plan your team and infrastructure growth alongside your sales growth – plan to have enough income/capital to be build your delivery systems and have regular financial reporting built into your rituals.

2. Team

You cannot grow without a team. You need people to deliver on the expectations of your promise to market. And you need them to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it and how important it is to do it this way every time. When you start hiring people, you will have to let go of doing everything yourself. You will have to trust others to do the work for you, but of course you’ll feel a lot happier about this if you know they are doing it the way you (and your customers) expect it done. So give them great systems to follow, and minimise the chances of them getting it wrong. Your systems will enable consistency, and will also enable your culture to survive as you grow. Your systems manual can include information on your rituals, meetings you have (and why you have them), values and vision for the company. The how and why of everything … this makes up your culture, and you should only hire people you think will enjoy being in a place that does things this way.

Another quick example: I go to a gym class at 6am three days a week. I get there at 5.30am and there is always a smiling face to greet me, which I appreciate even though I’m still half asleep. As soon as I scan my card to get in, they look at the screen and know two things – my name and the class I’m here for. They greet me by name and hand me my wrist band for my class without me having to say a thing (I do tend to grunt at that time of the morning). Then when I leave an hour later, no matter who is on reception, they always say ‘goodbye’ or ‘see you later’ as I scan my way out again. Always. This is systemised delivery of experience that every single team member knows about, and it makes me feel good about my gym.

3. Training

A business system is only as good as the people who follow it. So make sure to devote enough resources to training your team to deliver on expectations. If they don’t know how you want things done, they’ll do things the way they think they should be done. Train your team to know the company values and the expectations it has around delivery across all aspects of the business. Let them know why these things are important and then … and this is important… give them the freedom to follow the systems without micromanagement from you!

Exercise:

Conduct a ‘delivery audit’ of your business. Firstly consider all of the critical customer touch-points and the expectations they have of what and how you are going to delivery on your promise to them. Make a list of the key areas where you need systems in place to ensure you can meet those expectations. Then start creating systems to ensure consistent delivery across each area. You can get your team to help with this… the best person to create a system is the person who is currently doing that job well already.

Happy Growing!

PS. For more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs

The Pillars to Successful Business Growth Series. Pillar 2 – Your Business Model.

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Laura Humphreys

So you have a great product or service. You know there’s a need for it out there, you’ve defined your customers and your market (if not refer to Article 1 in the Pillars To Business Success Series). You may well have proven just how great your offer is, with consistent sales under the belt. But how much thought have you given to the growth plan for your business?

The true value in your business will ultimately come not just from what you sell, but also how well you grow.

To grow well, you need to think about your business model, sooner rather than later.

There are two key questions to ask yourself when thinking about your business model:

What is the potential for this business in the future (what is your vision for where you are taking it)?
How will it scale?

Let’s look at each in turn.

What is the potential for your business?

When I’m working with new clients, we spend a fair bit of time considering this question. We look at what you personally might want out of the business financially, the size of the market you are in, the competition you are up against, your future portfolio of customers – in terms of both size and value. We consider what you are offering now and who you are offering this to, and how this might need to change over time to enable the true potential of the business. We build a picture of what’s possible for the future, check in with your appetite for growth and your commitment to make this happen.

How will it scale?

When we have a clear picture of what’s possible, we look at the business growth plan that will enable this. How and what is your business currently set up to deliver? How will it need to be set up in the future to enable the size and scale of business you are hoping to build? What changes do you need to make to ensure this growth can happen? Will you be expanding into new markets? Do you need to make changes to the product or service itself? What team infrastructure is required to support the growth? What needs to happen to the way you make and deliver your product service? How can you reduce dependency on you and other key people, with systems, technology, team and training? We also look at the time frame over which these changes need to take place. If your vision for future success is five years out, you don’t need to make all the changes necessary right now. You can map them out over time and determine what you need to be working on right now to ensure you are preparing for growth in the future.

As you can see, there are a lot of questions to consider. Business is really a thinking game, and a planning game as well as a doing game. To be a good business person you need to think about strategy as well as delivery.

Here’s a definition of strategy taken from a well-known dictionary:

Strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem.

The question is always, are you willing to do the thinking necessary to plan for a successful future? Or are you always going to be too busy delivering your product or service today?

My job as a mentor is to ensure my clients have the structure, support and guidance to do the hard thinking now that will set them up for the future.

If you think you might be ready for this … email me at laura@liber8u.com to find out more about my programmes.

Happy growing!

PS. For more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs

The Pillars to Successful Business Growth Strategy Series. Pillar 1 – Your Product

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Laura Humphreys

A successful business is made up of 6 pillars to success, with each needing equal amounts of attention, talent, passion and skill for a business to succeed. Most business owners put their energy into one or two pillars, usually where their comfort zone lies. But business owners who recognise the need for improvements across all pillars have a far better chance at success.

In this blog series we look at each pillar in turn and discuss strategies and ideas for you to improve in each.

Pillar 1. Your Product

This is where every business owner starts. Some (most) start with an idea of something they feel passionate about and want to build a business around. This might be a product they’ve seen and want to sell, or something they want to build, or a service they want to deliver, often based around their own skill set or experience. Others (less frequently) start with a need or gap they see in the market and create a service or product specifically to address that need or gap.

The latter often have a better chance at growth. But why?

It’s called product/market fit. The better the fit, the better the chance at success – especially if the market that needs your product is big enough and has enough customers willing to pay a good price, with good margins for you.

Step 1

Step one to successful product development is to ensure there is a need for it and a market big enough to enable growth. You can do this in the early stages of business by creating simple versions of your product or service and testing it with sample groups of customers who represent your market. If you’ve been going for a while and sales are continuing to grow, then you have proven there is a need for what you sell. If sales are not going so well, you need to look at your product/market fit as well as your marketing. A simple survey out to those customers you do have could tell you a lot about what you need to do to improve your product to make it more appealing.

Step 2

Step two is to ensure you position your product to its market in such a way that it is seen as a more attractive option to all the other products out there. This positioning will form the first strategy in your marketing map (which I explain in detail in a later blog in the series), but before you even get to marketing it, you need to be confident your product is exactly what people want. Again, a survey to existing customers could give you some valuable information about how they see your product as compared to the competition out there.

Step 3

Once you are sure there is a need and you know what it needs to be to fit the need – is to make your product or service the best it can possibly be. This is called product development and of course, is an on-going process that lasts the life of your business. All great companies keep improving their products and services, and they have to keep up with the ever-changing needs in the market. You simply cannot sit still and expect that what you sold last year and the year before will remain relevant tomorrow – especially when things are moving so fast now. Technology is creating new and different solutions to old problems all the time. New, agile companies are challenging existing solutions and finding faster, cheaper ways for customers to get the same outcomes. So you have to keep moving, evolving and challenging your product development.

Step 4

Step four is to know when good enough is good enough. By this I mean that although your product or service is at the very epicentre of your business, and you have no business at all without it, you have to remember that it is only one of the six pillars you need to focus on. If you spend all your time delivering the best service, or crafting the perfect product, and none of it on the rest of the business pillars … your business won’t grow. So make it great, but know when it’s good enough to allow you to put your energy into the other pillars.

In my experience, small business owners spend the majority of their time and energy on perfecting their product or service… but often at the expense of increasing their knowledge and skills in other areas such as marketing or finance.

What about you? How much time do you spend working on, delivering or improving your product versus the other pillars?

Does your product meet the ever-changing needs of your market?

Exercise:

If you haven’t done a survey out to your customer base for a while, now could be a good time to do it. Find out what their current needs are, who else they are using to meet those needs, and what they’d like to see more of (or less of) from you to ensure you continue to remain relevant and necessary in their world.

Happy Growing!

PS. More more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs

How to grow your business… the Pillars to Business Growth Strategy Series

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Laura Humphreys

Nearly 5 years ago now, after selling my last business, I accidentally fell into being a business mentor. I found myself speaking at business networks, telling my story about how I went from being an advertising copywriter to creating and ultimately selling my own advertising agency… the approach I took, how I planned the sale right from the start, and what I learned about business along this way – with my agency and my subsequent pet care business. Before long people were asking me if I could help them turn their business into a valuable asset and my business mentoring career began.

I get clearer and clearer all the time how best to increase a business owner’s understanding of the fundamentals that will determine whether they build a successful business that feeds them wealth and freedom into the future, or whether they build a hard working job that will stop feeding them income the minute they stop doing it.

Over the next seven blog posts I’m going to share the key pillars to growth I believe can help any business owner, regardless of their industry, get a better understanding of what they need to do to be a smart business person.

The Pillars of Business Growth Strategy

Firstly, in Blog 1 in the series, I’m going to explain what the Pillars of Growth Strategy is … and what it isn’t.

What is it not is a revolutionary new concept that will set the business world on fire. There’s nothing new in here. It’s business 101 really.

What it is, rather, is a hopefully easy to understand summary of the fundamentals of what any business needs to grow. It seems obvious to someone who’s been through the journey of creating a business, but experience now tells me that it is not obvious to most small business owners – it certainly wasn’t to me when I started.

Your product is not enough

I meet business owners all the time. They seek me out and ask me for help on a regular basis. I take on 10 – 15 new small business clients a year and work with them intensely for a 12 month period. What I see so often is that business owners typically focus all their energy into creating and delivering a great product or service, based around something they feel passionate about.

And of course, having a great product or service is important, and forms the first pillar in the Pillars To Growth Strategy.

What many business owners don’t do, or realise they need to do, is focus equal amounts of energy into the several other pillars that ensure your great product or service forms the centre of a great business – one that will ultimately have true value.

If you focus on all six of the pillars with equal enthusiasm, and apply yourself to learning what you need to ensure each is operating at maximum effectiveness, you will build a great business – one that is independent of you.

The 6 Pillars to Business Growth

The six pillars are:

1. Product – what you sell, and the need it meets in the market
2. Business model – Where you are taking this business, how it will make money and how it can scale/grow bigger than you
3. Delivery – how you take your product to market, your distribution channels, operational effectiveness and efficiency and the robustness of the systems that support this
4. Sales & Marketing – how you attract new customers and retain and grow your existing customers
5. Team – the structure of the organisation you need to build and the quality of the people you engage, the way you ensure high performance
6. Financials – how you keep tab on your performance by driving revenues and profits up, and the reporting around this that lets you know how you are going

Most business owners are good at a few of the pillars, where their natural skills and experience fall. For instance I was always good at the sales and marketing and ensuring great product delivery. But I sucked at financials and team building. I learned this the hard way, and had to surround myself with people who knew these areas better than me before my business could really grow.

How about you? Which are you best at and which do you avoid because they are outside your comfort zone?

Exercise
Look at each of the six pillars and rate your business 1 – 5 for each, with 5 being “Nailed it” and 1 being “Oh dear not really.”

If you accept your business needs to score a 4 – 5 in each pillar to be truly successful, what areas do you need to put more effort into? And what is your plan to achieve this improvement?

Next blog in series
In the next of the 6 Pillars to Business Growth blogs I’m going to take a look at the Product pillar and see what distinctions we can make to make this rock even harder for you.

Happy growing!

PS. More more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs