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The Business Owners Handbook

Lynne Rawlinson

21-01-25

The Business Doctors Business Owners Handbook

Your business – your opportunities

Whether you are a serial entrepreneur or following your dream of being your own boss, the simple truth is that running a business has its challenges, and being the boss can be a lonely place to be.

The buck stops with you; you are expected to have all the answers.

  • Where are all the good people to be found?
  • When you do find them, why are they so expensive?
  • Who can you trust?
  • Why aren’t you making any money again this month?
  • How did you lose your key customer?
  • Who do you turn to when facing a critical decision or when your market shifts and you need to change how you operate?

No one individual has all the answers – at Business Doctors, we firmly believe that successful business is rooted in sharing experiences and knowledge without expectation of reward or return, and that is why we have written the business owners handbook to help guide you on your business growth journey and help you future-proof your business.

Business growth pains: death by chocolate

Death by chocolate, represented by chocolate cup cakes and RIP sign.

Imagine you own a chocolate business. In the early days, life is sweet. You introduce three luxury chocolate products and start selling them through a network of high-end gift and chocolate retailers.

Buoyed by your early success, you later invest in selling directly – through a dedicated e-commerce website and a network of retail outlets you establish across the UK. You also branch out from your luxury chocolate range into middle- and mass-market products, eyeing the prospect of supermarket sales and more.

However, as the company grows and the opportunities keep popping up, the challenges multiply, too. Cocoa prices and the cost of other raw ingredients keep on rising, squeezing margins, while the complexities of producing dozens of confectionary products from a single manufacturing site for a growing number of customers with different expectations and cultures and overseeing dozens of retail branches across the country with all the staffing and property-related challenges that go with it starts to take its toll.

There is competition now coming from all directions, too, as others have moved in on the market niche you first identified and have undercut you in terms of price. Suddenly, things are not so rosy.

What to do? While most business owners might carry on working with the logic of the business they have created, distracted by cash flow, staff, customers, and all those other things, it is hard to plan for in business; really, what’s needed is a root-and-branch rethink.

Many SMEs find themselves here, and the answer isn’t always straightforward.

Budget-oriented or forecast-based planning methods are insufficient in today’s highly competitive business environment. To survive and prosper, you will need to engage in strategic planning that clearly defines your objectives and assesses both the internal and external situation to formulate strategy, implement the strategy, evaluate your progress, and adjust as necessary to stay on track.

We will guide you through this process. Our SME owner’s handbook is designed to address all these issues and give you a clear action plan to address each one. To succeed, we will help you go on a journey of discovery and work out what matters.

PART ONE: FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU ARE GOING

Your business growth journey starts here!

Stop fire-fighting and get inspired again

Take the time to remind yourself why you started your business in the first place.

Are you:

A restless serial entrepreneur who spends your life spotting opportunities and going after the best of them.

Following a vocation – perhaps because the prospects for doing so are better than the prospect of working for others for years to come.

An accidental entrepreneur forced by circumstance to pursue opportunities on a self-employed basis (maybe because of redundancy) has forged a business over time.

Despite your reasons, there’s a good chance that you were excited by creating your business and by its development at various points along the way. But what about right now? Is the excitement and passion still there? Or does work frequently become a stressful obligation and a chore?

Before you embark on your business growth journey, it’s worth reminding yourself about the positives of owning your business and thinking about where you would like the business to be. Next, you will need a plan for getting there.

Driving your business values

The importance of having a clear vision, mission and values is grossly underestimated, especially within the SME community.

When a business has a compelling vision and a clear, worthwhile mission, its owners and stakeholders will be genuinely inspired, staff will be motivated, and customers will want to do business with it;. This iswhat makes your business tick!

Driving values in a business is more than ppostinga mission statement on the wall, on the website, and in the new-starters pack for employees. EYour business values must be embraced by every person in it starting with you, your leadership team ,and every staff member,

Once you are set on what you stand for, communicate this effectively to everyone within the business and externally to customers, suppliers, and the media. This will ensure consistency and cement your culture.

More information on business culture can be found in our article Vision mission and values and why they are so important.

Purpose: What is driving you.

It’s so easy for us to focus on what we make, sell, or provide that we sometimes forget to consider our actual value—in other words, what problems we solve for our customers.

“A Deloitte survey of over 4,000 respondents* found that over half of employees (62%) consider an organisation’s purpose before deciding to join, with over a third (36%) saying that an organisation’s purpose was just as essential as their salary and benefits package.

It’s often easier to describe your business in terms of what you do or how you do it. But can you clearly articulate why you do it?

What difference do you make to your customers, what are they buying from you, and why are they buying it from you?

Business purpose is an essential concept for building a successful and sustainable company. It provides direction and focus for the organisation, helps differentiate the company from its competitors, attracts and retains top talent, and builds a strong reputation in the market.

If your team know your purpose, they can be 100% focused and at maximum efficiency. If suppliers know your purpose, they can focus on giving you exactly what you need regarding products and services. If customers know your purpose, they are more likely to provide you with all the orders for your essential products and services.

The purpose of your business should underpin everything about it and drive its reason for being.

More on purpose can be found in our previous article What is business purpose and why is it important

Roadmap: Where is your business heading?

Long-term business vision

Although it may be difficult to think about the future when so much is happening here and now, it’s important to set out a longer-term aspiration and ambition for what you see the business achieving and becoming.

A vision is the best way to get your business moving in the right direction, regardless of others’ pessimism or lack of ambition.

No one could ever accuse Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg of lacking a vision or some cast-iron self-belief, and look where Facebook is today.

Your milestone or visionary goal should be more challenging than the strategic or tactical goals you may already have in place. Think big; if you do, you can potentially transform your business.

PART TWO: PLAN YOUR ROUTE

Avoid roadblocks: choose the right lane

Once you have established your destination (vision), you will need to look out for any external situations and events that could affect your progress. Using the travel analogy, before embarking on a long journey, you would check your tyres, fill the tank, plan your route, and check for any traffic issues along the way.

Think snakes and ladders

Snakes and Ladders, representing obstacles and opportunities

Like in the children’s board game, ladders refer to any opportunities that could help jump-start your business with new areas for sales or improve profit margins. Snakes, meanwhile, are those changes in the social, technological, economic and political (STEP) that might restrict your business in some way, by taking away the problem your business was solving or by introducing competition that may radically cut or even remove your margins.

This process is also referred to as STEP Analysis. It is a way of scanning the horizon for emerging technologies or patterns of behaviour to provide you with foresight so you can start taking advantage of potential market changes. You will also be able to identify opportunities for accelerating your business, such as government legislation that may stimulate demand for a particular product or service.

Keep your eyes on the horizon

There will be opportunities for your business to grow and develop that you may not be aware of, but when you conduct some basic analysis on the current mix of business across your company, I wonder how many different revenue streams there are and how they could be broken down.

Conducting a market audit is the easiest way to gain a real understanding of your market and the extent of the opportunities that exist within it.

What is it that you do again?

Understand your customers, customer types, and supply chain. A list of customers is great to have, but do you really understand them and their relationship with you? Think about how and why they buy from you.

What companies are in your supply chain, and why do you buy from them? If you don’t understand where you fit into a changing supply chain, you are vulnerable.

Do you have the right vehicle?

Take a fresh look in your rearview mirror

Once you have a clear picture of the market opportunities available to you from the market audit, you will start understanding the reality of your current capabilities and, most importantly, the opportunities most relevant to you.

You will need to plan your skills and capabilities for the new market and opportunities you have identified. Think about the skills and new technologies you need to adapt or adopt.

It’s a great time for self-evaluation: consider what your business is great at and whether there are any areas for improvement. Think about where you might be vulnerable and what your edge or USP (unique selling point) is.

PART THREE – MAKE IT HAPPEN

Look under the bonnet 

Do you have the WOW factor?

The way companies reach their customers and deliver for them is changing. In today’s transparent business world, being run of the mill is not enough—delivering a WOW factor is essential.

Think about your business through the eyes of your customers, concentrate on the things you can really emphasise to stand out from the crowd and understand the benefits of having a well-targeted customer offer.

Take the right people with you

The right people on the bus. Image depicts business people travelling together

Do you have the right people on the bus?

As your vision and plans come together, implementation means finding and keeping the right people with the right talents and how to get the most out of them.

A common mistake is to build your business around your people; instead, build people around your business.  

Start afresh and consider how your business needs to be staffed to meet that vision. Consider what the lines of accountability need to look like. Make sure you can retain good staff that support your business model, vision, and values by making them feel valued. Consider retraining where you have good staff who don’t have the knowledge or experience for the tasks at hand.

Any gaps in your workforce can be filled by recruiting the right people. Individuals who don’t fit with your business model or culture should be released, or they could seriously hamper your growth.

When you are happy with the people on your bus, ensure you clearly define roles, set objectives, measure performance and make them accountable.

Get your business into gear

We hope this article has helped you think about your business journey, where you want to be, and, most importantly, how to get there. You should have a better understanding of your customers, what matters to them, and how to leverage your USP.

You know what obstacles and opportunities you may face along your journey, but the route ahead is clear, and you have the right people on the bus.

You have checked your rearview mirror; now it’s time to accelerate. You are about to embark on an exciting journey.

Summary: There is no ‘one right way to run a business

There are many coaches, consultants and mentors, all with their own ideas on how to run a successful business. Graham Robson, Business Doctor for the Northeast, succinctly explains the role of Business Doctors.

“Someone told me there is no ‘one right way’ to run a business. And that’s logical when you think about it: if there were one book, we would read it and know what to do. But there are thousands of books, and each tells us the ‘one right way’ to run our business, so they can’t all be right.

“It’s worse than that. There’s an army of consultants out there who have run supposedly successful businesses and think they know the ‘one right way’ to run your business. But that’s not logical, either. When they were successful, they made decisions in a different environment under different circumstances with different resources. Your business is different, so we can’t apply the same logic and circumstances; it doesn’t make sense.

“What makes Business Doctors unique is that we don’t tell you how to run your business, we do not have the one answer. What we do is listen; we want to learn and understand the issues you face – the challenges and the opportunities you have – by listening and understanding, we can get to one of the root causes behind them.”

All new cars come with a handbook to help you navigate the vehicle’s functions, but owning and reading the manual doesn’t instantly make you a mechanic. If you want a Business Doctor to guide you on your business growth journey, please talk to us.

Reference: Breaking Big – The Business Doctors’ no-nonsense guide to achieving breakthrough growth for your business.

Other articles in this series include:

  1. Your business growth journey
  2. Driving your business values
  3. What is driving you?
  4. Where is your business heading?
  5. Choosing the right lane
  6. Keep your eyes on the horizon
  7. Do you have the right vehicle?
  8. Take the right people with you
  9. Look under the bonnet
  10. Get your business into gear

 

Author: Lynne Rawlinson

I work with the Head Office team and provide a full range of marketing services for Business Doctors.

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