Understanding Your Financial Statements
Without good financial information, business owners make uninformed decisions, which leads to stressful lives. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can learn to use your books to guide you in business — and you don't have to be an accountant to do it.
Your role as a business owner is to recognize good books, insist on them in your business, and know how to use bookkeeping information to make better decisions and more money. This is critical information every successful business owner must know.
If you're ready to understand your business the way you should have from day one, let's talk.
If you are not actively eliminating waste, you are tolerating it. And if you're tolerating it, it's because you don't recognize waste, you don't know what to do about it, or you're too busy or scared to change.
It's worth the effort. We have shown that reducing costs by 1% can increase net profit by 18%. Imagine the benefits of reducing waste by 20%!
Eliminating waste is a responsible, predictable, and powerful way to increase capacity and profitability.
If you're ready to stop tolerating a 5% net return, let's talk.
Intentional Bidding
The purpose of bidding jobs is not just to get work. The purpose of bidding jobs is to get work at a price that pays all expenses and earns a profit. We all know that, but we often don't bid like it.
Many of us bid just to get the work, which means we let the competition, real or imagined, set our prices. Only after — often long after — the work is done do we find out if we made any money. Sometimes yes; sometimes no; and sometimes we never even had a chance.
Profitable bids are the result of intentional bidding. The fundamentals of intentional bidding cover what it takes to make a profit and how to deal with the four obstacles to profitable bids.
If you're ready to start bidding with intention and stop leaving profit to chance, let's talk.
How Little Things Make a Huge Difference
It is always the little things that matter most.
A 1% reduction in waste can raise your profits by 17%. Every position in your company is critical to your success.
Understanding how small changes create big results is one of the most practical and powerful concepts in business. The little decisions made every day — by you and your team — are either building your profit or quietly eroding it.
If you're ready to start paying attention to the little things that make a big difference, let's talk.
Ask 100 owners the purpose of business, and you will get more than 100 subjective answers. But there is only one objective purpose for business, and without it, none of the others matter.
Do you place your highest priority on sales? Do you have too much inventory? Do you buy things to avoid taxes?
The purpose of business is to turn cash into more cash through a five step process. If you concentrate on the wrong step, you will be in big trouble.
If you're ready to make sure you're concentrating on the right thing, let's talk.
Cash Flow
If profit and sales were food and water, cash would be oxygen. That's because a business can survive indefinitely without profit or sales, but can't make it past Friday's payroll without cash.
Are you making a profit, but don't have cash? Are you losing sleep over payroll? Are you avoiding your suppliers' phone calls?
Understanding where your money goes is the first step to gaining control of your life. Determining the areas where your business is bleeding cash and discovering the tools to generate a cash surplus can change everything.
If you're ready to stop losing sleep over cash flow, let's talk.
Developing a USP for Your Business
Customers judge the value of your offer, then compare it to your competitors'.
Price competition drives prices lower and lower until only the most efficient business survives. To succeed as a small business, you must provide reasons, other than price, to buy from you.
Do you feel the need to match or beat your competitors' prices? Do you know who your target market is? Do you know what your customers really want?
If your first response to competition is to lower your price, you are working too hard for too little.
If you're ready to stop competing on price and start standing out, let's talk.