You can find numerous profit improvement checklists to ‘survive’ the recession. But, I have to ask, “So What?”
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I ask every audience I talk in front of, “What is the most important thing to measure to tell you how well your business is doing?”.
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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).

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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”:

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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…

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There are only four ways to grow your business:

1. Mess around with the products/services you sell…
2. Mess around with the markets/people you sell to… or
3. Some combination of the two or
4. Keep doing what you are currently doing.

That’s it.

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Your business plan (if you have one) is probably:

• Irrelevant
• Using a whole load of assumptions that are probably false.

More importantly, your business model, how you do business, is also based on a whole load of false premises.

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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

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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.

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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.”

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