Let's Make Business Easier

So, what do you require for a plan? Information, facts and your assumptions. In order to establish a plan, there is some analysis required, some preparation in order to piece everything together. You’ll need to make some deductions from the available information and assumptions you make. Now often the case will be that the plan sets itself out in front of you quite clearly, in order to get from A to B I do x, y and z. How many of those plans have worked for you? How often have you abandoned the plan owing to the changes encountered? The obvious answer is known as ‘the most likely course of action’. In this planning process, you’ll determine the number of courses of actions or COA’s. You will determine the least likely COA and a number between that and the most likely COA. This will allow you to prepare for other eventualities, have the agility that if or once the plan changes you can adapt swiftly knowing what you need to do. You might be thinking right now ‘that’s ok in the military context, business isn’t like that’! Let me ask you now if you have a cash flow forecast? From my experience, very few small and medium-sized business will develop a cash flow forecast. Essentially determine the most likely COA in terms of their income and outgoings within the business. Let’s be clear in business you’re going to want to avoid the avoidable. Here we can shape our future, we can now make some assumptions towards what we desire happens. Now this is all well and good when its business as usual, what about when there's a crisis? We need to have clarity of thought, we need to be able to plan under pressure, we need to remain claim and we need a framework to use. The business estimate is a modified process from which the military have been able to plan with clarity in extreme situation. Today I offer you a version you can use in business, these 7 questions will help you develop a clear plan of action in any crisis situation and out of crisis. In developing the business estimate there are two parts, first situational awareness and second the development of the plan . The first is situational awareness takes a good look at the environment in which your business operates. The impact of competition, the habits of your prospects and the impact of external influences; political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental (PESTLE). Situational Awareness Q uestion 1 – What’s happening in the marketplace/industry and why? In order to make some assumptions towards creating your plan you’ll need to take a look at the following: What are the current market/industry trends which affect the business environment? What assumptions can we make about the habits of the potential customers, why are they buying, where are they buying, how much are they buying and what stops them from buying from us? From this what are likely to be the COA’s; most likely, probable and least likely? What are the competitions capability in these highlighted areas and what do I need to do in the business to counter them? What are the intentions of my competition in direct response to or in reaction to my actions? What will be the likely financial consequences of these? Question 2 – What is the purpose of my business and why? From your vision what is your purpose, why are you doing what it is you’re doing? What are the driving factors here, what is it that will set you outside your competition? What are the drivers of the business? Why do we exist? What drives the business, the team and indeed our customers? What are the constraints we have to take into account in regards to our purpose in relation to time, team, finances, marketing, sales, logistics or any other relevant impact on the business and opportunities? Which of those do we impose on ourselves? Which are imposed on us and outside our control? What are the specific outcomes and deductions in relation to my business purpose? What is absolutely essential? What are the critical numbers required; the break-even, the gross profit, the net profit, lead generation, conversion rate, production requirements, service levels, the prospect habits, locations, and needs? What are the implied outcomes and deductions required from my business purpose? The standards and values; service/product quality, quality assurance, customer relationship management, skillsets and training required etc? It’s important to ensure you evaluate and re-evaluate throughout this process to ensure the circumstances and the market situation remains the same in context to what you aim to achieve. The concept of the plan doesn’t escalate and become over complicated. Question 3 – What impact do I want to have on the marketplace and what must be achieved in order to achieve that; the key performance indicators? In answering this question you’ll start to gain an idea in direct relation to what you want and need to achieve within the marketplace. This will help to determine the level, consistency, and quality of action and the potential resources which will be required. You will further develop specific targets and goals which will need to be achieved in order to have the desired impact. You will further establish what the major focus is, what is the desired outcome, in terms of revenue, new business, clients, leads generated and from this where the focus needs to be. What will all the actions be focused on achieving? You can also develop and determine what the main effort will be. In all activities what will be the one major outcome, the impact which will be desired. In this manner, you will remain focused on achieving the overall impact. Areas to consider in the market: market segmentation, targeted marketing, who you are targeting, where will you find them, what they seek, what they need, your USP. In terms of measurable you might want to consider: lead generation, conversion, average transaction, average spend, hourly rates, break-even, gross profit. Development of the Plan The next 4 questions will allow you to start to develop your plan, what actions and activities need to be defined in order to achieve your goals. Question 4 – What are the business objectives and how can I best achieve them? Having a clear understanding of your business environment, you can now begin to take a look at developing a plan of action. What will the objectives and outcomes be for marketing, sales, logistics, operational, financial, HR etc? Who will be responsible for the delivery of the outcomes, what team collaboration will be required and what managerial support will be needed to support the activity? You can determine what the mission for the plan should be, which will give the business the outline guideline of what must be achieved. As a reference, it will keep the team on track to accomplish the plan. Question 5 – What will be the resource’s need to accomplish the objectives? Here you can determine what you will need to assign to each of the desired outcomes in order to ensure they are delivered. How much time will need to be allotted? What are the financial implications and how much will be required to invest? Who will be given the task and what levels of managerial support will be required? In addition to this what levels of constraints will be required, what are the decision points, what activity and action when accomplished or when it happens will trigger additional actions, outcomes or choices of direction to go? What are the levels of autonomy in regard to making decisions? Probably most important here is what direction and support do you need to ensure is in place to facilitate the delivery of these tasks and outcomes required. How much detail will be required for the team to undertake the activities? Question 6 – When and where will the activities take place in relation to the overall desired outcome? What will be the timeline in order to synchronise and deliver the outcomes of the plan? When will activities take place and what will be the priorities of the activities? What will need to happen in order to trigger the following activities? You’ll also be able to define where decision points will be, at which point a multitude of alternate actions can be defined only by the specific outcome of the previous action. In these cases, it may be a financial target that will trigger a certain level of marketing or different marketing activity. This is referred to as the Gantt chart in the project managing world. As a visual aid, it can be extremely beneficial in monitoring the progress of the plan, individual activity, market trends, sales activities and your operational outputs. Question 7 – What control measures and limitations do you need to ensure are in place? In order to create momentum and facilitate the delivery of the plan without you becoming the default solution to every problem or issue you will need to have clearly defined limitations for the team. At which point do they need to seek clarity. What happens if the situation changes and when do they need to refer to you for guidance. The Business Estimate allows you very swiftly to establish a plan of ACTION. You can use the estimate to deal with a challenge that needs dealing with right now. Just answering the 7 key questions will ensure you develop a plan. For a more detailed plan you can then dive into each question and create a comprehensive plan of action. If you'd like to know more, or attend a planning session then get in touch. Book a call here.

Business orientation is the constant necessity to remain in the correct position in direct relation to the strategic objective of the business. This is where you define where the business should be on the journey in relation to where you are, the actual and budgeted position in financial terms. The key focus is the clarity on what the strategic, big picture, objectives need to be, or need to be defined as. Business orientation is about being tuned in to the business, ‘business awareness’. Constantly building ‘business wisdom’, striving to excel in your industry. The application of wisdom is also a key aspect of business orientation. This will create ‘strategic agility’, maintaining correlation to what has happened, what is happening now, what is likely to happen and how to pre-empt, respond or act. To be change-ready, in other words not dogmatic about what’s going on in the business rather have a mindset for change and by virtue growth. To always be seeking to improve your business wisdom, essentially the master of your industry, to be an industry leader. Now it's all well and good having business orientation when it's business as usual. The challenge comes when everything changes as has this been experienced through the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. In the circumstances the situation changed so dramatically the likelihood of any level of orientation completely evaporates. Interestingly in these circumstances, businesses can often find themselves in a place where their responses and reactions don't correlate with the orientation of the business. In some cases, this is due to responding faster to a crisis situation, being reactive rather then gaining situational awareness, from which informed decisions can be made. As I've already mentioned business orientation needs to be a constant focus for any business to remain on course. The likelihood of any business remaining on its designated course is slim. Therefore business need to have the ability to make course adjustments along the way. In this manner a crisis can be averted as the situation is understood and the business has the ability to alter its course and quickly re-orientated onto the new course. One key aspect of business orientation for any business is having clarity on the key performance indicators which need to be measured along the way. To remain orientated along the course there needs to be a mapped journey ahead and sight of the business dashboard. After all, you wouldn't jump onto a plane or into a car or sail a ship without some form of navigation equipment and your business dashboard is just that. So why would you do that in business. It's one of the leading contributors to business failure. Not see the warning signs and so not being able to respond. Over time the business owner will gain significant wisdom from business orientation. With every iteration, there is learning to be had. The situation presented offers a learning opportunity to get through. COVID 19 and the crisis is testament to those businesses that we're able to learn from the crisis and those that did not. With such unprecedented constraints made on businesses through the lockdown, businesses had no choice but to adapt overcome all of which offered learning. As the lockdown has progressed this learning, now experience has created a new bank of knowledge from which to re-orientate business beyond the crisis. There is no doubt that there will be a significant change in the business world. Those businesses that were able and agile enough to re-orientate will be able to set course going forward with good judgement. Business life is an ever-changing environment one which can shift with little or no warning. The balance of business can be shifted from a negative to a positive situation in the blink of an eye. It could be the impact of a decision, change in the business environment, disruption from a competitor, the changing circumstances in the financial world or the shift in governmental policy or another global pandemic. The key here is the preparedness, response and reaction you and your business have to have, the agility to re-orientate and survive any crisis situation because you'll have seen it coming.

Of all the emotions, we experience through our journey in business and life FEAR is probably the most prevalent, so it worth understanding a little about why we experience and what we can start to do to control it. In his book, Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman (Goleman, 1995) offers insight into our ability to first understand our emotions and through understanding better control and use them. The concept of EQ, emotional intelligence and having an understanding falls into two prominent aspects: Firstly, having an understanding of yourself, your goals, intentions, responses and behaviours and all other associated emotional feelings. Secondly, having an understanding of others and their feelings. From this Daniel goes on to discuss in depth 5 domains of EQ: Knowing your emotions. Managing your own emotions. Motivating yourself. Recognising and understanding other people's emotions. Managing relationships. Whilst we are focused on fear I have introduced the concept of EQ because of the myriad of emotions we experience. In my personal experience if you are unable to understand why and how fear impacts on you at whatever level, it will debilitate you and derail you from your path ahead. Your mindset has plays a significant part and stimulates emotion. With all emotions they are prompted and promoted by irrational thought, they don’t focus on the logic, often when we experience fear it will form the making of the excuse and a way out. Essentially without an understanding of fear, it will compromise your focus for the future and what you want to achieve. Here's the thing, how do you begin to understand fear if we do all we can to avoid it. Surely to understand it we have to become comfortable with it, we have to experience it in order to really determine how to deal with it. We have to become familiar and to an extent comfortable with it, used to its presence. I’ll pick up on this shortly as I share with you my experiences. Let’s put this into context for you right now in your business, what are you fearful of? Fear of failure; fear of success; fear of not knowing where to start; fear of getting finished; fear of being seen as a smart arse; fear of not being an expert; fear of losing everything; fear of change; fear of regret; fear of public speaking; fear of making decisions; fear of not knowing; fear of cold calling; fear of not reaching your targets; fear of committing; fear of being uncommitted; fear of not attracting customers; fear of criticism; fear of letting others down, fear of debt; fear of investment; fear of running out of money; fear of trusting others; fear of being on your own; fear of the unknown. FEAR OF COVID 19! The list is not comprehensive, and you will probably have others we haven’t mentioned here. What’s interesting in direct relation to the irrational aspect of fear is the paradox with many of the fears, the opposite often exists in the same context. Fear of success may lead to the fear of failure! You see you really need to take control of these emotions and take a logical reflection as to what triggers it. In the same context, you’ll be able to identify fear and then utilise it as a strength to motivate yourself. All too often fear will lock you away in your comfort zone in a bid to protect you. You will not seek to expand yourself, challenge yourself because it’s nice in your comfort zone, it’s safe in your comfort zone no one can touch you in your comfort zone. In all likelihood, you won’t be reading this book because it’s out of your comfort zone. Rather you may be looking to challenge yourself. You need to confront fear and to do that you will need to expand your comfort zone and that will require you to step out of it. You will need to nourish yourself in order to reduce the fear, stop being irrational and start to think rationally. You will need to develop, learn, gain greater experience, shift your perspective and be doing it continually. It is only then that you will start to determine what can actually be achieved, what you can become. Don’t allow yourself to succumb to the fear. False Expectations Appearing Real False Expectations Appearing Real is probably the most widely used acronym in relation to discussions about fear. Which on the face of it is a relatively good way to sum up the source of fear. Being fearful of an outcome which may happen or may not happen in the future. As an irrational emotion fear will, if left to its own devices, derail your progress and stop you from achieving what is truly possible. I’d like to take a moment to reflect on fear in its rawest terms, the confrontation of your mortality. Now I’m no expert, from my own experience, learnings and insight fear is also an indication and signal that you need to proceed with care and attention. Not an excuse to halt or freeze or switch off. Quite the opposite. As one lady shouted out in a workshop when asked what is fear, the response came f__k everything and run! (Thanks Michael Heppell, a great share) Funny as it sounded at the time when you reflect on that, it’s probably the response most people have. Irrational with a need to create rational responses and commitment. Throughout my military career, I have had to confront fear on many levels, most notably in combat. So, just how did I and all the soldiers and officers I served with manage to overcome the fear of ‘not coming back’. Conditioning, training and having an understanding of what to expect, becoming familiar with just how fear feels. I often remember the quiet reflection just prior to deploying on operations, it was probably the only moment when fear would suddenly come into the forefront of your mind. The reality then was focusing on the job in hand and having confidence in your abilities and being a part of the team. It didn’t result in inactivity but rather quiet confidence and inner reflection from becoming comfortable with the presence of fear. The key to being able to function effectively despite the presence of a fear of losing your life, being injured or one of your mates being killed or injured required a significant level of mental robustness. Learning, training and being comfortable with it was key. In the first instance, the training is extremely comprehensive and pressured to enable you to operate at such levels for prolonged periods. With such high levels of training your reactions to situations almost becomes instinctive. You are able to programme your mind to immediately act. Once the operations commenced you had to take control of your emotions in order to make sure you were able to operate effectively. You can see from the insight to EQ, this was a significant ability required to deal with the rigours of operational life. It allowed the rational thought process to take charge and decipher the threat and response to it in a comprehensive and measured way. Now I am only really touching the surface here, in order to offer context to the fears we encounter in business. One of the additional key aspects in understanding the impact of fear is understanding what physical and physiological signs you would need to be tuned into. Let me take a moment to give you some insight into the levels and impact of fear and what the likely signs and symptoms are. Often referred to as the ‘combat mindset’ the mental state of a soldier in combat conditions heightens physical and mental stress. In a high threat life or death situation, the body will have an alarm reaction and the freeze, fight or flight reflex will kick in. This creates a host of responses when the soldier finds themselves in a combat situation some of which might be: Increased heart and respiratory rate. Nausea. Chemical cocktail of adrenaline + endorphins results in shaking, clumsiness, slowness. Pupils dilate and both eyes open wide. Tunnel vision. Tachypsychia, which is slow-motion time/space distortion. Auditory exclusion, a temporary loss of hearing. Precognition, foreseeing what’s going to happen. Conflicting memories This cocktail of biological reaction results in various degrees of physical reactions, which some will, over greater exposure, adjust to and manage and others may not. Interestingly when I talk to business owners who are in a constant state of stress or fear it’s not unusual to talk of these symptoms. Why because our bodies are hard-wired to respond accordingly to threat. The challenge here is that fear is debilitating when we do not take control of it and understand it. It negates your ability to function cognitively because your brain is only tapping into the simplest of brain functions. Your lizard brain or the chimp brain is the part of the brain we have managed to keep from our ape decedents. It’s like a PC going into safe mode. It stops all other processing activity other than what’s going to protect and preserve itself when triggered by a fear response. Hence the freeze, flight or fight mode. So get comfortable with your fear and face them head on. As the saying goes, find the fear and do it anyway!

Getting out of your own way is not a flippant statement, if anything it should be a wake up call. I would suggest for the vast majority of people who are not living the life of their dreams or firmly working towards it, you are the problem. That little voice in your head that creates doubt, anxiety, fear, resistance, uncertainty and many more feelings and emotions is the root cause of who and where you are right now. Let's just take a moment to answer these 3 questions: If you were to know, and with no limitations what would your ideal life / business look like in the future? Where are you now? What's getting in the way, holding you back or slowing you down? As you contemplate the answers let me add context. In life there are so few who actually live the life of their dreams, they actually achieve the things in life that are important to them. There's a reason for that. They each have clarity, purpose and utter focus on what they seek to achieve. Now yes you can argue those who inherit wealth or are born into wealth, that's not my point here. Rather what makes them different from everyone else? One thing, utter focus on their dream. They have clarity on what they seek to achieve and go after it with a relentless gusto. One of the key words there is 'DREAM'. They have a dream and they commit to it. When did you stop dreaming? Why did you stop dreaming? Your own inner dialogue. 'I don't have any luck', 'It'll never happen to me', 'let's be realistic' or 'I'm just not born to win'. All bull shit and personal limiting beliefs. So isn't it time to get out of your own way. Do you want to look back on a life where regret is weighed in tons? Or would you rather start the the process of getting tough on yourself and starting to live the life of your dreams, where achievements can be weighed step by step in ounces. The point here is stop listening to an inner dialogue which serves no purpose but to hold you back through an artificial sense of keeping you safe. Whatever your spiritual beliefs one thing is sure you are only here once in this life so why waste it? Take a good look at where you want to be in the future and then set a course to go after it. Yes there will be a factor of time, some dreams will take time and you need to have that time. My point here is determine what you want to do with your life, establish if it's truly achievable and the get out of your own way! Now there's a Challenging Thought

In the world of business today it’s not just about owning the business, offering a service and enjoying the rewards. NO. today your business needs to stand out in order to reap the rewards. It needs to conduct itself in an exemplary way and add value at every turn all of which it needs to be a destination for your customer. In order to HAVE anything in life, you have to be proactive and DO something to achieve it. In order to attain wealth, you need to invest. If you want love, you’ll have to first give it. If you want respect, you have to earn it. No matter what you want, one thing is clear you have to DO in order to HAVE. Doing is not the only thing that needs to be changed in order to HAVE. You must BEcome the person who would have the things or persona that is desired. It is important to develop the identity, beliefs and values that the person who has those things has. It's like the Lotto winner who, within three years, lost the several million he won. He didn't become the "millionaire." What exactly is BEcoming? Most people develop their identity at a very young age. That identity encapsulates the values and beliefs formed in the process. These values and beliefs can limit the individual and their growth. For instance, some business owners believe that customers are always looking for a discount. As a result of this belief, their business ends up attracting that sort of customer. If a business owner believes that business owners are greedy, then that is what is going to dictate their business practices. To BEcome a millionaire, one has to develop the beliefs and values of one. These people have an identity that needs to be copied for wealth generation. It is said that you will earn + or -10% of the earnings of the three people you associate with the most. This is because one develops the values and beliefs of the people one associates with. Business is no different. Amazing businesses need amazing customers. In order to HAVE amazing customers, you have to develop your business into the kind that will attract amazing customers. What is an amazing customer? The answer to this is specific to the type of business in particular. Every business has a different definition of its amazing customers. An amazing customer could be one that always pays cash or one that sends lots of referrals to the business. It is important for every business to identify these amazing customers and find out what they want. It is important for a business to know how these customers shop and BE the place where they want to shop. The same is true of an amazing business. It is one where these amazing customers shop. It consistently delivers more than the customer expects. After BEcoming the business, it is important to DO the things that make these customers know what the perfect business will do for them. Imagine this rather unlikely scenario. The owner of a Jaguar leaves his automobile at the local garage that looks as though it has never seen anything better than a 1964 VW Microbus. If a business wants a certain type of customer, then it has to BE the type of business to which this customer will come. To be able to attract the people in your target market, it is imperative to BE the business that will attract them. This formula to success is simple, and if followed can lead to huge success in life and business- BE x DO = HAVE. It is important to remember that one has to BE as well as DO in order to HAVE. Now there's a Challenging Thought.