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"Abundance"
Edition 43, July 2009
©2009 ThistleSea Business Development, LLC
"Because YOUR Business should lead to ABUNDANCE."
"Abundance is produced by ThistleSea Business Development, LLC for the purpose of educating our clients, friends and associates." |
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| Greetings!
Welcome to this July 2009 Edition of "ABUNDANCE".
It took real courage for the founding fathers of this great United States of America to risk their lives and many losing their lives for a belief in freedom, liberty and a better future for the people of our country.
Today, it also takes real courage to face the truth about our situation and seek the assistance of others to help us forge our own futures and take the right actions.
Like our founding fathers, today's business owners are real heroes. Those who seek the correct information, find it, take the risks and forge new paths based upon their visions of a better, more successful and profitable future. This edition is dedicated to you.
I hope you and your family enjoys this 4th of July Holiday. It's one of the best times of the year.
I hope you enjoy this Edition of "Abundance."
Contact me if you have any suggestions or comments. We would love to hear from you.
JDL
John D. Laslavic, LPBC
Business Coach / President
ThistleSea Business Development
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Dealing with the Big Three:
People, Time & Profits |
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Part 3
By: John D. Laslavic, LPBC
Business Coach/President
ThistleSea Business Development, LLC
At the end of the day, how much is left in your company after all expenses are paid? And that includes paying yourself! A common mistake by business owners who end up subsidizing the company and neglecting their own needs. Crazy you say, happens every day.
So in what areas of your business should you look at in order to gain the most profit improvement? And, where are the areas that are most often neglected in your quest to produce the products and services for your customers?
Below are 11 areas and questions to consider:
1. Acquire New And Retain Existing Customers
Have you updated your marketing plan? Recently, (last 12 months) evaluated your marketing strategies based upon your target markets and the results you have achieved? Have you measured your return on your dollars spent on marketing?
2. Providing Great Customer Service
Does your company just look at answering complaints? Or, does your staff believe in cross-selling and up-selling your customers on appropriate products and services that will help your customers meet their goals? Do your employees have the authority to solve your customer problems and concerns immediately? Are you building customer loyalty?
3. Partner with Others (Fusion)
Do you have relationships with other companies that either complement your services or share the same target markets that you're trying to reach? Have you investigated ways to share resources, expenses and initiatives with these companies to build a greater awareness and serve these target markets and customers?
4. Turn a Service into a Product
Can you package or re-package your services in order to allow your company to better explain the benefits the customer receives? Can you provide the mechanism to package your services and price them more effectively? Are you able to clearly differentiate yourself from your competitors?
5. Tightly Managing Expenses
Have you developed a budget? Do you monitor both revenue and expenses at least monthly to determine where you stand? Do you hold your employees accountable for the areas in the budget that they control? Do you look at the ROI and make sure that there are enough resources for your staff to produce the desired level of revenue and take calculated risks in areas where growth is most probable?
6. Leverage Your Time
We dealt with Time in Part 2 of this series. However, it is worth repeating. Have you contracted for those things that are a less valuable use of your time? Have you hired the most talented service providers? Have you established metrics to measure their performance? Are your effectively delegating to your staff?
7. Maintain A Current Financial Reporting System
Have you established a system to monitor your financial performance, monitor accounts receivable, conduct an inventory analysis, monitor your sales and gross margin mix, implemented labor incentives, implemented a modern financial information system, reduced variable and direct costs to their lowest level and instituted financial benchmarks to measure performance on an ongoing basis?
8. Maintain Control And Monitoring Systems
Do you have the knowledge and ability to develop your operating systems? Can you keep them current? Do you use these systems to maintain control and monitor a consistent level of product production and/or service levels for your customers? Can your employees easily find and use these systems?
9. Get The Right Staff On Board
Do you have Job Descriptions for every employee? Can you easily update them with the business changes? Do you have an effective hiring system? Do your employees love coming to work? Do your employees know what their success with your company looks like?
10. Price Your Products Correctly
How often do you run a break-even analysis to assure you're setting pricing for a profit? When was the last time you analyzed your pricing to make sure you're able to hit your profit target?
11. Don't Wait To Seek Professional Help
I talk to many business owners in my work. Some I can help and others have waited too long to be saved from business failure. If there is one lesson I have learned. When in doubt, get help sooner than later. And, get the right help. Second opinions are OK, too.
The next article, (Throwing A Wrench in the Gears Of Your Business) provides a real recent story about just that, a great guy with a dream of a great business that died. How tragic. It just didn't have to end that way.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this series of articles; Dealing With The Big Three: People, Time and Profits.
If you have an idea on a topic you would like us to cover , just call or send us an email. |
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Throwing A Wrench In The Gears of Your Business |
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By: John D. Laslavic, LPBC
CASE STUDY
I recently was referred to a business owner by one of my clients. At my first meeting with this business owner, he expressed how absolutely fed up he was with his business. The dream of a successful business had vanished for him. He informed me that he had already gone back to a full-time job with his former employer working for this airline on the graveyard shift as a mechanic. Not a job he wanted, but it paid the bills.
Throwing of the Wrench
What transpired was an accident by a subcontractor who did not have insurance while working for him. This subcontractor threatened to hold this business owner liable for the accident. Medical bills, pain, suffering, attorney's costs, and the insurance issues all lead up to him being overwhelmed. After struggling with the business for 8 years, this event was the final wrench that was thrown in the gears of his business and his dreams of having a successful business,
On the advice of his legal counsel, he was advised that his subcontractor agreements did not meet the IRS guidelines for a subcontractor relationship and he would be held liable. On this advice, he should make a settlement payment. Fortunately, the subcontractor released the business owner from this liability with a financial settlement.
Under this pressure, he decided to get small again. The business owner continues to serve his existing customers himself after releasing all other subcontractors. He works this business in the day and the full-time job with the airline as a mechanic at night.
He has stopped answering the phone for the business while his current customers continue to refer new clients to him. In his words: "I just can't take it anymore. I want out. I want to sell." The fear of continuing to run the business has overwhelmed him.
Decisions of the Business Owner
Did his dreams of a better life and a great business have to end up this way? What drove him to not seek help and to continue to defend what he really didn't know? Was it fear, pride, greed, inability to communicate, pressure, lack of knowledge, thinking that it cost too much to seek help? Most likely was some or a combination of all these factors? He revealed he did have an informal coach, which was actually another business owner with a similar business, running that business the same way. Not too successfully either, he mentioned.
This business, as with all small businesses for that matter, is the sum of all of the decisions of the owner. 10 examples of the decisions he made includes:
- Having actual employees is a bad thing!
- Hiring good employees is impossible!
- Not ever wanting to have a payroll!
- Paying worker's compensation insurance would never work for his business!
- His pricing could not be changed!
- He could never put together a budget for his business; it's just not for him!
- Planning just would not work!
- Legal services are to be used only when you're in trouble!
- I know what I am doing and if I work hard producing for my customers, everything will work out!
- I just can't find good people!
- I can always trust the advise from another business owner!
- Just to name a few!
Selling the Business?
Naturally, this business owner wants to sell his business for the highest amount he can get for it. "So how much is it worth," he asked me? How much will the market (buyer) be willing to pay him for this business?
Some quick research revealed that most businesses in his market space are selling and in some demand. This business owner made a small profit for 8 years, but in retrospect did he really have a business? What does he have to sell?
After our discussion, he realized that all he has to sell is some equipment and a list of clients / prospects. Not much after 8 years of hard work. If he is very, very lucky he might get a buyer to pay him a small amount for the equipment and some goodwill. This ending was not at all what he had dreamed. How unfortunate.
Was he disappointed? YES. Did it have to end-up this way? Absolutely NOT.
Leading your Company
It was too late for the business owner to save the business in this actual situation above. He had already given up. However, if you're under some pressure from your business you still have the opportunity to build a great business and the life a great business creates for you and your family.
There are many lessons that can be learned from this unfortunate situation. Could this business owner have changed this outcome? Would this outcome be different if some of the decisions made by the owner had been different? Is the business a reflection of the owner's thinking? The answer to all the above is YES.
ThistleSea's business coaches' work with business owner's everyday to help them to improve the performance of their businesses and the business's value. We offer a Business Effectiveness Evaluation that can help pinpoint your business's strengths and weaknesses in order to develop an action plan for improvement. This plan provides a road map of small steps you can take each day to help you achieve your dreams for your business, leading to a great life.
Isn't it time you sat down with ThistleSea Business Development. Invite us in for a discussion. Call (724) 935-1930 to set-up your free meeting with a ThistleSea Licensed Professional Business Coach. I encourage you take action today!
© 2009, ThistleSea Business Development, All Rights Reserved |
9 Cannots - A Message Worth Repeating
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- Support thrift. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
- Strengthen all. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
- Help the wage payer. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
- Support cooperation. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
- Encourage rich and poor alike. You cannot help the poor by discouraging the rich.
- Establish a strong financial foundation. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
- Save. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
- Fight for freedom. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
- Take Responsibility. You cannot help man permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Attributed to Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, who lectured around the United States about industrial relations at the turn of the twentieth century. And used by Ronald Reagan at the 1992 Republican Convention.
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Our Office Location: |
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ThistleSea's Business Development Offices
7500 Brooktree Road,
Suite 117
Wexford, PA 15090
724.935.1930 Office
925.848.3266 Fax
Our Services:
ThistleSea Business Development
offers:
One-on-One Business
Coaching,
Extended Coaching
Services,
Group Coaching,
Training and Business
Development Services.
Strategic Planning Services
ThistleSea is a Distributor of Extended DISC Personal Profile.
Also incorporating affiliate services of: Fintel, Profiles International and Channel Connect.
Professional Business Coaches Alliance
ThistleSea is a proud member of
the Professional Business
Coaches Alliance (PBCA).
ThistleSea Coaches meet the high
standards of the PBCA.
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QUOTES OF INTEREST BY OUR COUNTRY'S FOUNDERS
How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigour.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
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I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Nathan Hale, before being hanged by the British, September 22, 1776
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I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way.
John Paul Jones, letter to M. Le Ray de Chaumont, November 16, 1778
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If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.
Samuel Adams, letter to Elbridge Gerry, November 27, 1780
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In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes, by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute, tythe, tallage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
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ThistleSea Business Development is a Certified Guerrilla Markeing Coaching Organization
Call us to discuss YOUR situation, maybe we can help?
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© 2009, ThistleSea Business Development, LLC , All Rights Reserved
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