Here’s the second half of my ‘Don’t Do’ List policy to follow on from my last post:
#6 DON’T BUILD THE BUSINESS AROUND YOURSELF
In the early days it’s great to see those emails and texts for you – you are important and wanted. However, this excitement soon turns into an addiction. Your definition of success starts to depend on how much you are needed. Wrong! (unless you want to be the bottleneck in your business).
In a desperate attempt to keep control of my life I have now adopted a ‘Don’t Do’ List policy. It should be easier to stick to the ‘Don’t Do’ list but actually it is till pretty tricky. So, in no particular order, today’s “don’t do’s”:
I have been talking to lots of people recently about delegating more… letting others take the strain… freeing you up to do the important stuff. Another part of that plan will be to stop your addiction to your Blackberry/email/mobile device.
Now is the time to get you out of the loop that is your belief that people have to talk to you in person (and right now), and if your phone doesn’t ring then you feel unloved…
There are only four ways to grow your business:
That’s it.
Your business plan (if you have one) is probably:
More importantly, your business model, how you do business, is also based on a whole load of false premises.
I recently attended the Growth Strategies Conference in London – they had a rather cute vote-catching system. Delegates had to press a button on the handsets and votes and results came up immediately.
The results of the votes were as follows:
The biggest factor restricting growth is:
31% skilled staff
23% economic climate
18% lack of capital
11% competition
9% resource prices
8% regulations
I recently attended the Growth Strategies Conference in London – an array of speakers and a good day overall catching up with numerous contacts.
Highlights/most memorable parts of the day: Colonel Tim Collins OBE, Martin Higginson, Doug Richard.
A couple of themes came through loud and clear.
Another quickie here.
The Question: “How can I tell if my advertising is giving me good value for money?”
Answer from me: “Test, measure, evaluate. Ask all your customers why they have come to you… put a code on the advert so you can see which sales relate to which advert.”
Here’s another question from one of my Bristol seminars: “I have to work so hard in my business I sometimes wonder if it is worth it. What does the panel think?”
Answer from me: “Somehow you’ve managed to get things the wrong way round. As Michael Gerber says, you’ve got to stop working for the business and get the business working for you. To me, a pretty good definition of a business is ‘a profitable operation that can work without you’. Otherwise what you have is a glorified job where you get paid an hourly rate for what you do.
At a recent workshop in Bristol I was asked the following question.
“I’ve done loads of adverts on the radio and in the local, and even national, papers but none of it seems to work for me and I don’t understand why. How can I get more customers?”
My simple answer was that for most of us advertising does not work.
Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and the author of business best-seller Bright Marketing - Why Should People Bother to Buy From You? (Crimson Publishing).
He has recently been described as "one of the UK's leading marketing specialists" and the "entrepreneurship guru". He runs The Directors' Centre, helping small businesses to grow.
