Have you ever noticed that doubling your workload does not mean double your capacity to deliver? It does not automatically mean that you are better positioned to achieve the results and provide the experience you and your customers and clients aspire to?
If you want the results of a complete business and not just the results of being over worked at a job, you must build a business that gets those results and not just a more demanding job. If you want to scale up your business, in terms of 2x, 3x, 4x the results you currently get, you must set up your business to consistently operate at 2x, then 3x, then 4x its capacity.
Set up to scale up. That’s our motto. That’s the position we put our clients in. It comes from helping people achieve the status of True Entrepreneur beyond the status of owner- operator on to the abundance and wealth of living the True American Dream.
I define a True Entrepreneur as a business owner with all day-to-day work and management viably done by others. That’s what I help my clients achieve.
“It’s not enough to do your best, you must know what to do, then do your best.”
W. Edwards Deming
Developing and realizing a vision, a unique value proposition in the marketplace, through a professional group and movement that you build. Achieving abundance, wealth, and true independence and leaving a name and legacy behind you - this is the American Dream.
Our efforts are designed to use all our experience to help business owners set up their businesses for expansion. The six steps that set up a business for expansion are:
1. Actually, have a strategy for growth.
2. Finish your business model setup.
3. Build your A-Team to support you.
4. Optimize your new leadership role.
5. Have step-by-step instructions for each area and role.
6. Use files for target attainment not just as storage.
Actually, have a strategy for growth.
Business owners very often focus on production and sales. They have an idea about a desirable future, but they seldom actually have a plan designed for orderly growth to achieve it. They do not have in place targets set to mechanically achieve growth for their business. At Proactive Business Management we make sure business owners actually have a strategy for growth. For expansion to happen you need a plan that results in growth and ultimately in stable expansion.
Finish your business model setup.
Business owners very rarely set up a complete business with major sections represented – the executive section, administration section, client marketing section, finance section, production and delivery section, quality control section, and a business development section. They start to set up a business, but after making sure the product/service are created, sales are occurring and delivery, they remain focused on sales and delivery, sales and delivery. The rest of an organization is incomplete and business owners often get buried under all the various other roles and responsibilities.
To build a complete business that makes it possible to stably expand, you must finish setting up the complete business model.
Build your A-Team to support you.
The focus in a business is to serve customers and clients, however, if you’re to free up time to work on your business rather than in your business you will need to build an A-Team that will support you. As long as that support enables you to produce greater results then the business will be able to pay for that support. Done correctly you can turn a payroll burden into a payroll investment. The Pareto rule says that 20% of causes result in 80% of results. If you isolate the 20% that is vital for you to do, and the 80% that you can turn over to a support team, it becomes easier for you to double and triple your results which means 160% or 240% gain.
Your support team should take over much of your administrative work, much of the servicing of customers and clients, the reception and routing of customers, clients, staff and management, calls, packages, questions, and all internal activities. Lastly, lead development should be handled by a lead developer. Business owners are definitely given leads, referrals, and introductions, but they should turn those over to a lead developer to do all the work to set up a presentation with the owner, a specialist or sales executive, juggling all the logistics involved in making sure everything goes as smoothly as possible with minimum impact to the business owners’ time.
Optimize your new leadership role.
Once you start to open up your schedule by delegating some of the day-to-day work to your team – administration, service, reception and routing and, lead development, it’s now time to better establish and optimize your new leadership role. This work is geared to ensure that you break through and stay through your past operational threshold, limiting you to your current operating basis – it has been working but is holding you back from reaching the next level.
Have step-by-step instructions for each area and role.
Streamlining the day-to-day practices for each area and role in your business requires simply worded documentation (using 9th-grade language) that ultimately includes step-by-step instructions for the standard practices and usual variations that cover the business’s normal day- to-day operations.
Use files for target attainment not just as storage.
Ensuring that projects and targets are not only envisioned and set but seen through to intended results or better is vital to long-term business success. Failure to achieve results, failure to innovate, to resolve negative situations in business as well as implement positive advances, eventually catch up to a business owner and can drown them. Files can be effectively used to channel targets and projects to completion, not just act as long-term storage.
With a strategy for growth, a complete business modal, effective support, a new operating basis at the other side of your operations threshold, standard practices in writing and simple language, as well as management files to ensure business administration success, business expansion is assured.
Crispin Sandford
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