IF you want to scale up your business, there are five fundamental things you need to get right – or you could just end up turning little problems into much bigger ones.
The Brisbane Business Hub recently invited Bill Stack, a business coach at onGROWingBusiness.com and Action Coach Australia, and Lucas Meadowcroft, AI expert and founder of Crofti.com, to discuss the foundations that every ambitious business owner needs to put in place.
“Lots of business owners unintentionally create businesses built on chaos,” Bill said. “So when those businesses scale up, they just end up expanding that chaos.
“But there are methodologies you can put in place that will help you to increase sales and profits, free up your time as a business owner and create an amazing team.
“With these steps, you can build a commercial, profitable, enterprise that works without you.”
Mastery
First up, you need to stabilise your business and eliminate any chaos that has crept in early on, so your time is spent effectively and you can focus on meeting your customers’ expectations and gaining financial know-how.
“Business chaos can mean constantly putting out fires and having no clear sense of direction,” Bill said. “To eliminate this chaos, you need to apply mastery across destination, money, time and delivery.”
Bill suggests beginning by asking yourself questions including these:
Money mastery
- Where are you going with this business?
- How is this business going to fit into elevating your life?
- What numbers does the business need to produce to achieve your goals?
- Is this going to be the right kind of business for you?
- Is this going to be the right kind of business for your family to own over generations?
Time mastery
- What is your team doing with their time?
- How often do you double check to see if there’s any waste in your systems?
Delivery mastery
- How well is your product or service given to your customer base?
- How many of your customers are raving fans, not just satisfied customers?
- What is the referral process?
- What is the feedback process?
- What do you do with any feedback?
“Once mastery over these things is established, you can begin to add extra things to your offering, like bundles and strategic alliances, to improve your customer experience and maximise your profits.”
Niche
Once you know what you’re selling, you need to be able to articulate that to the world in order to start generating leads.
“If you want to conquer your niche, it boils down to your unique selling proposition and your guarantee,” Bill said.
Bill warned that the idea of “guarantees” can scare a lot of business owners, but if used correctly, the enhanced conversion rate will cover any losses that result from it.
“Make sure your guarantee is easy to fulfil and won’t ever be unfulfilled,” he said. “This differentiates you from your competitors and creates value for your customers.
Leverage
Once you’ve got cash in your pockets, Bill said it’s time to consider “leverage techniques” – things you can reinvest that money into that will make your business more efficient, and ultimately more profitable, over time.
“This creates less double handling of information, less lost information and less wasted meetings on things that could be done through automation,” he said.
Bill invited Lucas Meadowcroft, founder of Crofti.com, to discuss how AI can be particularly helpful within this step.
“Fear around AI is the number one thing I hear,” Lucas said.
“It is becoming more common to have a blurring of the lines between digital, physical and biological, which can seem scary, but it really isn’t.
“AI has been around for 60 years and you’ve already been using it without even knowing it, so why wouldn’t you use it to increase efficiencies around business processes?”
What’s the biggest frustration that you have in your company today? That’s the first question. And then the second question is, if you could come to work tomorrow and never have to do a particular task again, what would that task be? Because that’s the task you want to automate.
“Don’t focus on keeping up with all of the latest developments in AI. Instead, focus on what you need. Use a website called There’s An AI For That, which aggregates all of the AI services that are available.”
Team
Ultimately, no matter how good the systems you put in place may look on paper, Bill said that whether or not they’re successful will come down to the culture you build within your team.
“You’re in charge of the culture that you end up building,” he said. “Culture eats process for breakfast. If you have a bad culture, they’re not going to follow the right processes anyway.
“So you have to think about the team members you want to put in place to maximise this machinery that you’ve developed.
“Bring in people that you know will fit into your culture.”
Synergy
Finally, once your business is operating smoothly, it’s time to consider synergy – what other markets or market segments can you start serving?
“Once you have a well-oiled machine in place, it should be replicable,” Bill said. “A successful business can take various forms, because the principles are the same. You know what it takes to be productive and profitable.
Ultimately, once you have a business that works without you, you can focus on investing in your future.
