I posted the following on LinkedIn recently and was a little worried that I would offend people - but as they say, "sometimes, truth hurts" and as business owners we need to face reality.

If you want to get more of my LinkedIn thoughts you can click here.

HERE'S THE POST

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I’m going to annoy 34.5% of business owners with this post….

Your business is not unique.

Your business is not different to everyone else’s.

Your problems are not only being felt by your business.

You see, having worked with over 110 companies over the past 7 years, and having interviewed business owners of companies large and small, winning and losing there are some simple rules to be aware of:

1. You need to have a strategy for growth - otherwise you’ll repeat the same cycle of performance, year after year after year.

2. You need to ensure that you have several ways to get customers - yes this is marketing, but as there are many ways of doing this, it is important to have several on the go at any one time (don’t put all your eggs in the Google Ads basket!).

3. You need to be comfortable that you know your numbers - that is not just revenue and profit, it’s cash flow too.

4. You need to be developing your team to think for themselves and to start to make decisions that liberate you from the “thinking and doing” - and if you don’t have a team, you need to start looking to build one (recent studies showed the revenue per employee doubles when you go from just you in the business to 4 plus you!)

5. You need to have a repeatable and systematic way to delight customers - doing this well and delivering “WOW” moments will enable you to leverage these people for reviews, and more importantly, potential referrals (you can think of these as a “free” sales team)

All businesses have the same daily challenges, and remember that a big business is just a small business, only bigger.

Speak soon,

James