The Doors Are Open – Now What?

By Bob Dunn

Bob Dunn

The doors are open and the first dollar is in the till. You dreamed and worked, never sure that it would happen — never knowing it would be so hard to get this far. You’ve made it. Congratulations!

Now, how do you get enough customers to make a profit? Do you have enough cash to advertise as much as you should to grow the business? How do you make enough profit to make a living? Have you got the right people to do the right jobs – with the right quality?

These and hundreds of other questions face every new business owner every day. All of your efforts until now have been going into getting this far. Now you realize there IS more to do – but what? How?

Here are two
suggestions. First, don’t spend money without a plan and don’t spend
money for anything not on your plan. Second, don’t lay out a plan until
you have a very specific idea of what you are trying to achieve.

If you’ve decided to build a bigger business, what does “bigger” mean?
How big, and by when? What does the business look like in terms of
customers, employees, products and services? Possibly, your goal might
be to sell the business at some point to have enough money to retire.
If so – by when? How much does the sale of your business have to
provide, and how do you build that value into the business? Get your
personal goals laid out in very specific and detailed terms.

Work backward from these goals, lay out the step-by-step plan to get
there from here. If that includes accumulating cash and making it grow,
have a specific plan for saving and investing that will get you there.
For now, stay focused only on what you need to do to reach your goals.

Here is a process that works:
•    Once you have a very specific goal and a set of steps that seems
right, turn the first step into the last step – the one just before you
reach your goal.
•    What does it produce toward the goal? How does it happen and what
is the money, time, skills, people, and materials you need to make it
happen.
•    Keep a tally against a calendar for the money, people, materials,
and other external services this step requires. Keep a separate tally
for each type of expense.
•    Estimate the result to come from this step and the increases in
revenue and cash. Do this on the most detailed basis possible; monthly
if you can, quarterly otherwise.
•    Now, back up to the step before this one and repeat the process.
The trick is to make sure that each previous step accomplishes both
what is needed for the current step, and also generates what is needed
to provided resources and progress for the step that is to follow.

Repeat this process for each step in your plan.

Once you have done them all, look over the plan and check to make sure
you have provided well enough for key essentials: advertising and
promotion; lead time on purchasing materials and equipment; lead time
for adding new people; time/cost for training them; adding space when
needed; and so on. Make adjustments as needed.

This process will take a while. However, if you do it honestly and
carefully, it will help you challenge and refine your thinking about
growing your business. You may learn that some old ideas will not be
productive enough, and you will need new ideas that are more
advantageous. Invent them!

If necessary, you may need to get some coaching on working your way
though the plan. If you have stayed with it to a point where you
believe in the plan that you have produced, do you still have a
question about what to do next or why?

If you are still uncertain, start breaking down each step into even
smaller steps, and keep working in more details until you do know what
is next.

Then, you’ll be on your way!

For more than 40 years, Bob Dunn has provided services for corporate
development, business development, engineering and product development
for global organizations, governmental departments and more than 200
companies.

He has helped form client companies, develop corporate equity
transactions and provided strategic advice to strengthen client
positions in diverse markets and geographies. Mr. Dunn is the President
of Enterprise Solutions International LLC, which trades as “ESI
Advisors” (www.esiadvisors.com).