This Week@Work, setting your business apart in a crowded market is vital if you want to grow. Building your commercial systems to enable it, even more so. Sourcing the blueprint for how your business systems will be built, is the key that unlocks your scale and growth, or a chaotic nightmare.
Innovation creates something more for the same price, OR the same for a better price. It means you should constantly create, test, experiment, and improve what you already have….even if it works. It’s a practice and mindset and the key to unlocking the excitement your business needs to attract talent, suppliers, and customers and make it more interesting for you.
This Week@Work I’m more disillusioned than ever with digital marketing. It’s increasingly a game where you pay to play, and the only ones who seem to win are those with the deepest pockets, and the platforms themselves. What alternatives do we have to woo customers? Could the answer lie in getting to know them better?
This Week@Work I challenge the idea that retiring from your business is somehow an accomplishment. I met with 2 older business owners, both feeling pressure to hand the reigns to the next generation.
But their desire to stay on is not greedy, it’s fuelled by passion for the business they created, and the meaning they draw from seeing it grow and succeed.
As a business owner, the reward is often in the journey not the destination.
Once your business has achieved a ceiling of performance, your time and attention determine your future success. Habits formed whilst building your company will fail its future growth and value.
This Week@Work, purpose is paramount. I visited a successful tea company who now proudly display their original tea sorter (a DIY modified cement mixer!) in their reception area to remind the business about their heritage. In tough times, go back to what you’ve been through and come through to motivate you to get through now, and focus on what needs to come next.
This Week@Work I’m taking us off the beaten track, and I’m not going alone. In a tough business environment we can’t tackle every single challenge alone. Surround yourself with trusted allies to get out of your head – it makes the climbs more manageable, interesting and rewarding.
This Week@Work I’ve had a number of conversations about business valuations, and how to design your business so that you can generate income AND deepen value for a premium valuation for exit. If you think, plan and act both in the present and future, you can have your cake and eat it.
This Week@Work I met with a business owner who has a brilliant product that genuinely competes with the best in their industry.
But a product only exists for one reason – to solve a problem for someone. The team and commercial system that allows people to find, use and want more of the product is the 2nd half the business.
Watch as I discuss this idea of 2 parts of a business.
This Week@Work I met with a business that is deeply entrenched in all things solar – a great sector to be in but their problem is that they have evolved to be everything to everyone. Their positioning is not clear, and they won’t be able to scale and grow until they get that right.
I look to baked beans to illustrate how to think about your business’s positioning.
