Through all my years in business advising small business owners, I constantly watch for trends and statistics affecting small businesses. One of the most consistent statistics I always see whenever I check for the latest trend is the statistics that 8 out of 10 startup small businesses fail within the first 5 years.
That’s such a consistent statistics through the years that there must be something behind it. Surely 80% of small business owners can’t possibly be poor business people?
If you own a new or relatively new small business, and you are feeling frustrated working hard every day but not getting any closer to your goals, you need to read this.
Once you understand how a Business Plan can help you move from chaos to a cohesive series of steps to grow your business, you will know how to remove the stress and frustration from your life. Read More
Not many small businesses have prepared a business plan.
How can anyone risk their savings and their dreams to open the doors of their new business without a plan?
Don’t get me started! You wouldn’t go grocery shopping without some sort of plan – the shops you need to go to, the route to them in the right order, preparing a shopping list and taking it with you, making sure you have enough fuel in the car, working out where you will park.
Yet many people start or run a business without any plan at all – and a to-do list does not constitute a plan by which you should risk your thousands of dollars!
Now if you do have a business plan, good on you! It means you are taking this seriously, as you should!
But let me ask you this – are the goals that you have listed long-term goals or short-term goals? Read More
Last week I gave you a system to make your vision statement come alive and become a day-to-day measure of what you do, what decisions you make, and where you go from the now to the future.
If you haven’t seen that lesson on how to make your vision real, then go back to teikoh.com and search for the article and video lesson published on 29th January 2019. Go now, then come back here!
In that lesson, I talked about the four perspectives by which you should define your vision, making it real by describing exactly what your business will be like from these four perspectives, and therefore using them as measures on achieving your vision as well as guides on your day to day behaviours and decisions. Now, let’s dive deep into those four perspectives to see how you should use them to define where you want to go and how to get there.
When you wrote your last business plan, did you go on a “retreat”?
That’s what most people do – they clear out some time and take their team out of the workplace so they won’t be disturbed, and they spend a couple of days discussing what’s going on in the business and how to improve it and set goals and strategies.
But here’s what’s wrong with this approach – more often than not you discuss and find solutions for problems and opportunities from inside your business, and forget that it’s external stimuli that will have serious and unpredictable effects.
So you go along and implement your plan only to have, one day —– WHAM! A big problem from outside hits you where you weren’t expecting.
Watch this week as I discuss how to plan with an eye to external factors.
Let’s summarise – use PESTLE to analyse and think about the external factors that could have an impact on your plans:
P for Political, being any political changes in your region that could have an impact;
E for Economic, requiring you to look at the local, national and global economy;
S for Social, asking what social trends are happening right now that could affect your business;
T for Technological – what is happening in and outside your industry that is affected by tech changes, social media and so on;
L for Legal, looking for potential changes to the law that could impact your industry;
E for Environmental, including the environment as well as surrounding factors – can any development here affect you?
If you want more of these free tips, tools and resources to help you grow your business, click here and sign up to get them sent directly to your inbox every week.
And while you’re there, go to teikoh.com and see what other great ideas you’ve missed.
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