How To Grow Your Business…

When you first start out in business you are excited and motivated by the thrill of being there and the opportunity to make it into something special.  You have big plans to grow it, earn a good living and enjoy a great lifestyle.

After a few years the excitement can begin to fade as you come up against difficulties.  It generally starts when you expand to bring on a few staff to cope with your growth.  You get bogged down in problems; suppliers, staff, customers and the business all seem to conspire to make your week a lot tougher.  You have always been the chief problem solver and fixer, but now your company is bigger, there are a lot more things to fix!  You start to wonder what the answers are because you realise this isn't what you wanted.

Eventually time takes its toll and you go into your business each day feeling tired and fed up with it, yet not knowing how to escape.  You may even become become the worst-treated employee in your own business, working longer hours, taking fewer holidays and paying yourself a lower hourly rate than your staff get.  Maybe you even think about getting rid of your staff and just going back to "how it used to be, I made money then".

Finally you realise that you have created the world's worst job for yourself.  You don't get to spend time with your family, you walk around in a grumpy mood and have no time or energy left for your social life.  It's horrible, but sadly it happens time and time again.

Getting Down To Good Business…

At this point you have three choices - accept things as they are and put up with it, go backwards and accept that running a business is too tough for you, or get some professional help to get past this stage so that you can enjoy the real benefits of a successful business.  Fixing the root cause can be a lot easier than you imagine.  It is also far more rewarding both personally and financially.

The simple issue holding you back is that you have been so busy racing around fixing problems and "putting out fires" that you have spent little or no time to improve the way your business works, putting in place the standards and systems or processes that will get it running like a well-oiled machine again.

Fire-Fighting vs Fire Prevention

Early on in my career , I worked for a shrewd man called Jonathan.  One day he asked me what percentage of my time I thought was truly productive for the business.  When I replied, somewhat defensively, that I was productive at least 80% of the time he smiled and started to explain something that really made sense.  He thought he was probably truly effective for less than 10% of his time. 

He explained this was because he spent so much time putting out fires in the business.  This firefighting kept him away from improving things.  Suddenly it made complete sense to me.  I realised that my own effective time was barely 5% because I had so many fires to put out every day.  Your job as the owner of your business is to work ON your business, not just in it.  If you fail to work on your business, your business won't work for you.

Maybe the fires in your business are production problems, or soothing angry customers, or chasing new orders to keep the business afloat.  Perhaps you have difficult staff who give you a hard time and don't get the job done well or consistently enough.  All of these issues, and more besides, boil down to the same thing - fires are burning and you are the only person who can put them out.  What you need is to stop the fires from ever starting, rather than a bigger hosepipe!.

If you want to change your business, I can help.  I will show you how to become great at fire prevention and how to win your time back from all the urgent issues that crop up every day for you.  Once we free up your time, we will work together to increase your sales, profits and improve team working.  Your business will grow more profitable and less stressful with every passing week.  Through our regular meetings you will learn how to work ON your business instead of in it, so that you can move it on to the next level.

Take a look at the testimonials from some of my clients and you will appreciate the kind of results we can build together for your business.  Let's face it, you are tired of putting out fires - it's obviously time for you to make a change, isn't it?

Your Next Steps…

 

Pick up the phone now and dial 01480 370142 for a confidential free discussion

 or

Fill out the enquiry form

 

 

Best Wishes For Your Success,

 

 

P.S.  One definition of madness is to keep doing the same things but to expect to get different results.  If your business is giving you problems that you have not been able to fix, the same problems will keep cropping up until you choose a better way.  Successful people realise they need to try different things.  Send me a question via the contact form above with your biggest business challenge, question or problem and I'll give you some ideas to get you started.