My 5 year old successfully completed his first ‘join-the-dots’ drawing yesterday. By successful I mean, without any help. I thought he was just colouring in and he came back to me and showed me the dinasaur he’d just created by sequentially joining the numbered dots, 1 though to 18. As I watched his excitement at having created a picture out of nothing, structure out of what was previously chaos, I realised that business isn’t that much different. Once we ‘connect the dots’ of our business we create a complete picture… a picture that provides clarity of focus. The problem is though, the dots in our business aren’t numbered. So, many business owners keep seeing only parts of the complete picture (or worse, just a random series of ‘bits’ that are somehow supposed to work together). The challenge of course is to determine the right sequence of dots for your business. There are some fundamental ‘dots’ in every business; for example – brand, marketing, sales, product, service, and finances. But how do you know how they need to ‘line up’ in your business? Business Model – The first determinant in how your dots need to connect is understanding your business model – how do you make money? Your business model is always the first dot, because it defines how the other ‘dots’ need to come together. ‘The Plan’ – I see countless business owners spend far too long on the planning and strategising ‘dot’ without any ‘runs on the board’. Part of this is because they’re not in urgent need for the revenue (yet), and part of it is also based on a strong need to get it right. It is actually very hard to accurately plan without accurate data. So I encourage clients to get ‘selling’ sooner rather than later. From there you can correct and refine your plan. Marketing Plan – This is another critical dot and is often more important that the business plan as it determines how fast you’ll generate revenue. That is, after all, the point of being in business isn’t it? To bring in revenue? Closely related to the marketing plan ‘dot’ is your sales strategy – how do you convert prospects to sales? You can have the best marketing in the world, and if you’re not selling anything it’s a waste of time. Financial Management – This ‘dot’ actually guides all the other dots . You need to know whether you’re actually making a profit, what you’re margins are, how long your cash-reserves will last and ultimately whether your business model is, in actual fact, a ‘business’ model – or whether it’s a hobby. This ‘dot’ gets ignored for far too long all too often, and business owners wonder why they are ‘working so hard’ and not making any financial progress. Of course, within each of these ‘dots’ are more ‘dots’ that need to be appropriately organised for any particular business. The key insight here is, that unlike my son’s join-the-dots dinasaur, the same set of dots need to be sequenced differently for each business. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ join-the-dots pro-forma in some imaginary business rule book . The only way to figure out the right pattern for your business is with informed insight and experience – yours and others. Happy drawing :-)
About the Author
I teach women who get nervous and tongue-tied in meetings, think aloud and ramble when presenting or experience imposter syndrome when asked to present, how to speak with confidence, authority and authenticity. I do this entirely online, through my program, Impactful Presenters. So if you have access to the internet...
