It's time to check all 7 spokes in your wheel of business.

You need to have 7 key functions in place for your business to run on all cylinders. That's how you can make a profit even without having to be there.

These 7 key ingredients are:

1. Time: You should set time aside to work on your business or none of the rest can happen. How much time per week do you diarise to do this?
2. Goals and strategy: Unless you have written out your goals you can't set business strategies to achieve them for you. When did you last write out your top ten goals?
3. Finance and numbers: Do you know and understand your key numbers? Did you know you can then make a huge difference to your bottom line by making a few small improvements in them? Usually, if you make a 1% improvement per week in one of them, you can double your operating profit in 6 months. Do you know how?
4. Strategic sales and marketing: Most business owners do what's called tactical marketing. Loads of activity but no real underlying strategy. Do you understand the buyer's journey,? Have you systemised your sales and marketing processes?
5. People and teams. As you grow your business you need to build teams, taking into account different personality types, intelligence types and skills. This is a crucially important area and it applies even if you outsource much of the work. Michael Gerber, in The Emyth explains why you need to draw out your organisation chart and specify all the roles and responsibilities in it. You do this even before you have the people to slot into those roles.
6. Operations. Like most small and medium business owners, you're probably strong in this area. However, you might still be able to improve your efficiency and customer service.
7. Systemisation. If you want your business to run without you having to constantly be there you need to write out how various jobs and tasks should be done. That way you standardise how your business operates and you can train anyone up to do various jobs. So you need to develop a Systems Manual. You can systemise all the major a jobs and roles in your business. Where would you say you rank on this?

It's a good idea to score yourself out of 5 for each of these key functions and then devote time to improving your weaker areas. That way you will get your business to run smoothly and get you to where you want to be. Assuming you know where you want to get to?

#accountant #director #entrepreneur