ArchivesBusiness Coach Archives — C. Lynn Northrup, CPA, CPIM
Planning for Success
Planning for success will create success. The pandemic has challenged existing small businesses in addition to the startup of new businesses as a means of economic survival. Creating a business plan will help you:
- Think through your entire business strategy.
- Understand your financial requirements.
- Secure funding.
- Develop your marketing message.
- Identify key customers and how to provide them value.
- Recognize operational challenges.
The process of developing and documenting your business plan gives you a chance to make your mistakes on paper so you can avoid making them. This saves time, money, and costly mistakes.
Some things to consider in your planning process:
- Understand your customers and their needs to help position you to create value for them.
- Develop solutions that fit customer needs and solves their problems.
- Describe how your business works and how you deliver value to customers.
- Identify and analyze your main competitors so you can create a competitive advantage.
- Assess your target market to make sure it’s big enough to make you profitable.
- Analyze your financial projections and develop scenarios of what could happen.
- Make sure your value proposition is sustainable and scalable.
Creating a careful and complete business plan is a blue print for success.
Many new entrepreneurs will start out and not know where they can get help with information they need to get started. Here is information on some resources for small businesses that might be helpful.
- https://digital.com/how-to-take-your-small-business-online/
- https://digital.com/business-loans/
- https://digital.com/business-credit-cards/
Get started on planning for success today!
Take this Time to Work on Your Business
We’re facing the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced in our country and the world. Millions of people are without jobs and many businesses have been forced to shut down. We’re dealing with the Corona Virus crisis, the silent killer sweeping the country and the world. People are asking what we should do and how can we survive. I don’t the answers to the future. My advice is rather than panicking, take this time to work on your business and prepare for a future after the crisis.
Working on our business, what does that mean? Here’s what I think it means and some ideas on what we should be doing:
- Brainstorming for new ideas
- Assess your strategies and adjust for the future as best you can
- Evaluate and assess all the new risks
- Figure out how much money you will need to survive and ways to access it
- It’s essential to orient your business to the reality of new economic and market conditions
- Consider how to maximize assets to get the most bang for the buck
- How can the stimulus package be used to maximize your cash flow?
- Think about managing the scale of your business to fit and adjust to the future reality
This list could continue, but this gives you some thoughts and ideas on where to start working and focusing.
In addition to these ideas and thoughts, it’s essential to realize that there are only 4 ways to grow your business:
- Increase the number of customers of the type you want
- Increase the frequency of the transactions
- Increase the average value of each sale
- Increase the effectiveness of each business process
It all really boils down to these 4 ways and they need to be quantified in order to create focus on the right steps. Remember that what you can measure, you can manage, and produce the result as a result creating effective processes.
So, in the mist of all the fear and chaos, take the time to contemplate and consider different scenarios. Both the good and the bad. Plan for the worst and plan for the best. This will put you a better position to act and do what needs to be done.
