Overcoming Obstacles To Growth

Business, as with life, presents ongoing and recurring challenges and hurdles to overcome as a business lives, develops and grows.

In a previous article we mentioned surrounding yourself with excellence and combining this with an ambition to achieve ever greater heights, being an overriding requirement to succeed in breaking through all the many ceilings and challenges, which one will encounter in a business.

?But this is not the only solution available.

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How do you create solutions to overcome obstacles and grow to the next level?

New ideas, Fresh branding and Product innovation?

These are just 3 approaches to re-generating revenue sales and growth.

?New ideas can drive product innovation and arise from market research as well as speaking to customers. Product and market surveys are especially useful to generate new ideas for the business, its products and services and operational processes.

?Fresh branding can change perceptions towards your products and services and could potentially increase sales, if done correctly and if a customer sweet spot is found. The alternative also holds true if you get this wrong.

?Good product innovation results from regular and ongoing research and development and is something that should never stop. Businesses should constantly innovate and revamp and renew their product and service offerings as this will keep existing and prospective customers interested.

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Stop hemorrhaging cash?

Is your business constantly experiencing negative cash flows and is your debt increasing?

This could indicate spiralling costs with static revenues or even falling revenues with constant or spiralling costs. It is even possible to find that both revenues and costs are declining but that revenue is falling faster than the rate at which costs are declining.

Whatever it is, it cannot be ignored.

?A cashflow runway is particularly useful in identifying cash shortfalls before they happen. The YELLOW line below depicts what is known as the cashflow runway. It reflects an increasing trendline whilst cash reserves are increasing and conversely, a decreasing trendline when cash reserves decrease. The danger point is when the yellow crosses down through the ZERO / BASE value line.

Using a graphic representation of future expected cashflows is an incredibly useful tool to assist us in seeing exactly when we anticipate running out of money. This tool works whether we earn regular, monthly, annuity type income or whether we earn large, once off revenues. It provides early warning signs, which should drive us towards pro-active, corrective action.

The practical implementation of this tool is simple. On one line you record all known future, monthly, realisable revenues. On another line you record the actual monthly future costs. Compute the difference in a third line. Project all three on a graph. In the above-mentioned case, we were able to project revenues up to a specific point in time, whereafter the revenue stopped. Costs remained however and by using this tool, we determined that the available cash on hand would only last about 12 months. The business owners knew therefore that they either had to find new revenue streams or consider closing the business timeously, to distribute available cash reserves to the owners before entering the crisis phase and potential liquidation.

How do you break through your ceiling?

Now that you have recognised the ceiling and understood the causes of hitting the ceiling and not automatically breaking through the ceiling, you need to implement the “breakthrough strategy”.

Data analysis will not only assist you in identifying the problem areas but will also assist you in identifying potential solutions. In a specific case study performed in the fast-food industry sector, a company identified a particular store in the group that was constantly struggling to be profitable. The owners took a decision to cut their losses and sell the store. At the last minute they suddenly realised that most of their sales in the store resulted from online orders and home deliveries, which was interesting because they had almost no online presence at all. By simply creating a great online presence in the immediately surrounding area and acquiring a fleet of motorcycles to deliver orders, they quadrupled the store’s revenues in less than a year and improved profits 6 times because they adapted their workforce as well as their working hours.

Naturally, this was coupled with the owners’ desire to grow & expand the business. If the desire to grow and develop is not there, then nothing will make a business turn around it’s revenues and profits.

Passion & enthusiasm for new challenges was the other character trait of the business owners. They all have billionaire ambitions, as was evidenced by a simple decision to cut their losses and then most importantly, to move at the speed of light to implement the changes, the minute they realised and saw the opportunity.

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How do I know that I have broken through?

The most interesting indication of breaking through a ceiling is to see & hear the passion & enthusiasm of the employees. There will be a bounce in everyone’s step and smiles on their faces.

Revenue growth will be astounding. You will see numbers on your sales and financial reports that you previously only dreamed of.

Improved profitability is a factor that does not arise from increased revenues alone. If increased revenues are accompanied by contained or reduced costs, you will see the improved profitability in your bank balance and management reports and you will feel the improved profitability, on the day that you file your next provisional tax payment or tax return.

Improved cashflow will result from the abovementioned factors turning positive and you will see the bank balance increasing.

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How do you break through your limiting beliefs?

Understand the ceiling & yourself. This is the psychological barrier to breach and often, it is the most difficult of one’s challenges to overcome.

Recognising the ceiling has been discussed in detail above.

Understanding the ceiling comes from all the critical evaluation and analysis, combined with the identification of the ceiling and the decision making as to how you intend breaking through the identified and quantified ceiling.

I firmly believe that a cardinal requirement of success is to understand one’s own, personal limitations and capabilities. It is only once you truly understand yourself and especially know and understand your own limitations and capabilities, that you will know what you can do and what you cannot do.

Once you know what you cannot do, you start employing and building the team around you, that will compliment your strengths and weaknesses and fill all the voids that you leave by virtue of constraints in your own personality, character, expertise, and experience.

Determining one’s limitations & capabilities requires great self-awareness.

Believe in the power of all possibility & potentiality.

To start-up a business and grow and develop the business through all the different business types from start-up to a listed company, takes great self-belief, self-confidence, passion, optimism, drive, enthusiasm and dedicated hard work.

Build a team stronger than yourself.

Many great leaders of the past have taught us the invaluable lesson of surrounding yourself with expertise and people, who are all stronger, better and faster than yourself.

A chain with three, strong links, typically does not break and will not break easily. You may be successful on your own, but you will never build lasting legacies on your own, unless you are a performing artist or a sport professional or of a similar profession, where your actions alone, determine your success and earnings potential. However, even this can be debated and disputed. Sports professionals and performing artists eventually need good managers, agents and financial support teams to ensure they leave lasting legacies and as such not even these industry sectors are immune from the need to have strong teams around them.

Commercial businesses and professional practices are even more susceptible to this requirement.

Naturally, all of this requires leadership with the ambition and desire to build a large and sustainable business – to “ …. soar with the eagles.”