2022 is nearly over and it’s been another opportunity to learn a lot about yourselves, your businesses, and the world you create around you.

In 2023, our #1 priority is to continue to work with committed business owners to design a path that allows their business to run whether they turn up or not.

So here are some thoughts for you to mull over a mince pie or two to help you make 2023 your best year yet…

1. Stop Chasing Revenue. A bigger company is not necessarily a more valuable one if the extra sales come from products and services that are too reliant on you to deliver them.

2. Start Learning Lessons From Your Customers to see what is really important to them, and identify gaps where you maybe letting them down / missing opportunities etc (using the NPS method for example is a fast and easy way).

3. Sell LESS Stuff To MORE People. The most valuable companies sell a few differentiated products and services to many customers. They are famous for a few things, not average for many things.

4. Move Away From The Products/Services That Depend on YOU. If you offer something that needs YOU to produce or sell it, consider dropping it from your offerings. Services and products that require you to break your T.E.R.M.S (Time, Effort, Resources, Money, and Sanity) are NOT worth it in the long run.

5. Collect More Money Up Front. Turn a negative cash flow cycle into a positive one and you boost your business’s value and lessen your stress load. We’ve learned that when we have the money, we also have the leverage…

6. Create More Recurring Revenue. Predictable sales mean less stress in the short term and a more valuable business in the long term.

7. Be Different. Get out of that ‘Red Ocean’ and create your own ‘Blue Ocean’ where you own the market and can predict it, rather than reacting to it and you’re simply in a race to the bottom like everyone else.

8. Do A Risk Analysis Of Your Key Areas. Look at your key partners, resources and tasks and work out what would happen if they were taken away from you. Recent years would definitely have taught you this.

9. Teach Them To Fish. Answer your teams’ question with: “What would you do if you owned the business?”(Read Anything You Want by Derek Sivers).

10. Create Your Own Manual. Document your most important processes so your team can do their work without you.

And the BIG one – if you have not done this already:

11. Design Your Business on your T.E.R.M.S and start this by asking yourself two simple questions:

• What do you want from your business and life?
• What are you prepared to do to get this?

If you need any clarity or help on the above, you know where we are.

See you on the other side!

BW,

Martin