Business Planning | Teik Oh

How to grow your business with no external capital

Jun 05 2015

You’ve started your business. You may have been running a few years and you are now at a stage where you need some capital to organically grow your business to its next stage.

We all want to see our businesses grow into something bigger, but finding external capital is difficult these days. Where are the angels when you need them, especially if you don’t want to go into debt?

Well there are things you can do to grow your business from within. Watch this week’s video to see what you can do.

Remember – there are always innovative ways to find capital from within your business. Sure, if you could get an injection of $250,000 to half a million, what you could do to your business! But when it’s not there, it’s not there and your growth will have to be organic and a little bit slower. But grow you can.

As always the fun starts after you watch the video – what do you think? What are your ideas or experiences in finding organic capital?

Get over to https://teikoh.com and leave a comment. Better still, sign up at here and be part of the Masterclass conversation!

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Starting in Business

Jun 01 2015

Are you thinking of starting your own business?

A 2014 survey showed that it is the dream of almost 60% of people in employment. I don’t know how many people not in employment wish to start a business, but either people in jobs really hate their jobs or it is built in to our genes that we want to be masters of our own destiny.

So if you want to start a business, what do you need to know?

In my opinion, having helped many successful start-ups over the last 30 years (and nursed a few failures!) I believe what you need to know is the answer to two basic questions.

Firstly, how will my business grow and prosper over many years? And secondly, what are the basic supports I need when I start?

Let’s deal with the first question first – how will your business grow and prosper over many years?

To answer this question you need information about the following:-

What kind of person am I?
What exactly is my business?
What skills do I need?
What money will I need?
What is my plan to grow and prosper?

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Starting a business involves sacrifices – what might they be?

May 29 2015

Well, the title says it all. Starting your own business involves making sacrifices. I’m sure you have been thinking of some of them already but I think it’s useful to be prepared for what might come.

Starting your own business can be incredibly rewarding. It’s usually about following a dream. Some of you are perhaps a little more down to earth. “Oh no'” you say, “it’s not a dream, I just want to work for myself!”

Well, that’s a dream isn’t it? Whatever the form, you have decided to start your own business to achieve something – your independence, a lifestyle, to make a difference, to be recognised, to create.

However the reality for most of us is that the startup phase is long and hard. Your dream is not going to be achieved in that first few months or even year. In that time you have to work hard, work smart, spend a lot of time on it, choose to invest in it instead of something else. This is when the sacrifices start to be asked of you.

So, it’s better to recognise that some of these sacrifices will have to be met now rather than be surprised by them. But remember your dream – that’s why you are making these sacrifices.

I’d love to hear about your journey. Get over to the website and leave a comment about what you have sacrificed and was it worth it.

At https://teikoh.com you will find more tools and resources to create strategies to grow your business. Sign up with your email and name and I’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing!

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Communicating Organisational Change

May 18 2015

Open and honest communication is essential in your business in order to keep staff engaged. When your business is about to implement some substantial change such as significant expansion, changing procedures, building a new team, changing business models like going from bricks and mortar to online, communication becomes even more critical.

When you want to open communications channels about organisational change, you need to send the right message to the right people at the right time. These messages need to be custom-built to the audience and the stage of progress, they need to address fear, they need to deal with natural resistance to change, and they need to use different media.

The key is – what is appropriate to the specific stakeholder?

The importance of communication in organisational change cannot be over-stated. Handled badly and you could end up with a vision that is misunderstood, as against all stakeholders involved attaining a common understanding of the goals and direction of change. It can be the difference between fear and resistance versus motivation and co-ordination.

However, the enormity of the task cannot be under-stated.

A management school study found that the total amount of information given to an employee in three months averaged 2.3 million words and numbers. A typical communication about change within those three months involved a 30 minute speech plus a one-hour meeting plus one memo and one internal news article that included 13,400 words and numbers. So the typical communication about change consisted of 0.58% of total communication!

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Be SMART in planning processes

May 15 2015

When you are preparing your plan, whether it is a Strategic Plan, Business Plan, Marketing Plan, Operational Plan, or any other plan, you will end up listing your Goals and Objectives, and probably your strategies or actions of one kind or other.

However, have you been in a position where, some time later, people who are implementing the plan disagree about how far you have got and how much you have achieved? Some will say you’ve got there, others will say that you are only partially successful – and yet they are reading off the same planing document! Have you come to re-read your document say a year later, and then wondered exactly what you meant when you wrote “open up new markets”? Did you mean in different towns, or with different products?

Perhaps you re-read your plan later and thought “how did we agree to do that? It was never achievable!”

SMART is a model that you should use whenever you are writing goals, objectives, strategies and actions. This video explains what is SMART and how to use it.

SMART means:-

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Category - Business Planning

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How to grow your business with no external capital

Starting in Business

Starting a business involves sacrifices – what might they be?

Communicating Organisational Change

Be SMART in planning processes