¿Are you a professional hoofboot reseller? ¿Is your business only surviving and not giving you big profit? Then… Keep on reading, you’re in the right place!
I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel here… there’re millions of people outhere with more experience and knowledge on this field than me. At the end of the day I’m a vet with a deep understanding and huge practical knowledge on hooves, horse diets, nature rythms & systems… but life has pushed me forward and I ended up as a business owner. And as far as I have seen in the boots sector, I can guess without failing too much that something similar has happened to you. So… let me explain you what I have learned that is helping me & my business to go forward.
1.- Pay yourself first.
Most of us become entrepeneurs without knowing anything about business.At least that’s what happened to me and what I see in my surroundings. Ask yourself honestly… Do I really know what running and owning a business means? Too often, as managers, we simply get too busy in our daily work and tactics implementation that we loose the big picture and we end up struggling.
So the first tactic is learn. Read books, attent to online courses, fo to seminars… do anything you can to learn and then, apply it! Give it a try! Everything you learn, just try it. This is what pay yourself first really means.
2.- Value is the key & giving some of it first is a good way.
I’m not sure if this is new for you but it was for me when I first read about it… «money is simply the stored value of what you already have given to others». So there’s only 2 ways to earn more money and they’re deliver more value (to more people or more times), and deliver bigger valuable assets.
But value doesn’t transforms directly to cash. You have to deliver the value for a price and someone has to appreciate the value of the asset and buy it from you. So basically it’s a 4 steps chain: Create value –> sell it –> get attraction –> close sells.
It’s a pretty easy concept to understand but most of us do not think too much on it… isn’t it true?
Now let me explain the second part of this tip that says «give some value for free first is a good way to start a sell». The fact is that when someone buys from you it’s mainly because you’re solving a problem or pain that he/she already has and he/she trusts you. A good way to begin a trusting relationship is to give something in advance without expecting «anything back». So let people know you, help them a bit first and they’ll be happier to buy from you afterwards.
3.- Save cash during the fat cows time.
All markets have it’s ups and downs. So when you’re going up you should store cash so you can invest during the bad times. A good way to do this is applying the 4 buckets strategy which says that any business should be able to survive with the 60% or it’s revenue and at least set aside the 20% as savings, the 10% for investments and another 10% for learning or getting trained.
4.- Understand the 4 steps of creation.
We live in a dimension where we can create whatever we want. If you think that is not true, simply look at the sky and spend some time watching the planes passing by… So… now that you have realized that this is true, then you should be asking yourself how it works! And the creation works like the following 4 steps chain:
1.- Know exactly what you want to create with all the details possible.
2.- Know exactly the reason why you want to create it and the emotion that lies underneath that purpose. If at that point the emotion is not intense, then you should intensify it or leave that project.
3.- Create an strategy that will lead you to the exact result you’re searching for.
4.- Apply the strategy and does not loose your focus no matter what happens or appears in your journey.
5.- Reserve «thinking time» at least once a week.
The last tip for this article is think. How many time do you spend thinking on your business? I guess that you spend far more time doing than thinking, reacting than creating, patching than preventing… isn’t that right? If you’re in this situation, then STOP! and give you some time at least every week to think! If your business is in danger, then push you forward and spend a little bit of time daily only thinking. By thinking I mean asking you questions and giving you several answers.
Here are some topics and some questions of each field that you should be analyzing that might help you:
1.- Your business strategy. A strategy is a creative & long term broad vision about your business that is sustained over structured, short term & easy to evaluate tactics.
«which is the vision for my company and how I will make it true?«
If you accept an advice then I will recommend you to be strategic and visionarie and delegate BUT monitorize the tactics or the implementations.
2.- Your new ideas under test. Businesses are full of decisions that should be took fast and changed slowly. So you better get them right! To diminish your failures ask yourself the next:
«What could go wrong? & what can I do to prevent it from happen?»
«What don’t I know? & how I can gain the knowledge that I need?»
«What I’m not seing? & where I can seek for advice?
3.- Your results. Results are everything and in business they are easily evaluated when checking the accounting numbers because they reflects your effectivity (how you convert your assets into sales), your efficiency (how’re you converting your sales into profit) and your productivity (the relationship between your cashflow and your profits).
So… ask you the next:
«Which is my monthly/yearly revenue? and which is my monthly/yearly profit?»
As you know, there’re a lot of situations where you can be making a lot of annual revenue but small profit because the costs are too high. Check which is your actual % of profit so you can see how effective, efficient & productive are you.
«Is my monthly cashflow positive?
If your cashflow is negative, then you’re loosing money and you’re in troubble. So your costs & payable accounts are eating your business because are bigger than your incomes. If that’s the case, then you should seriously analyze where’s the problem. Maybe you need to sell more (get more customers, make them come back more often or make them spend some extra money), maybe you need to reduce costs, maybe you need to shorten your receivable accounts and extend your payable accounts…
«Is my cashflow greater or smaller than my profits?
Cashflow is super important in any business because is telling you how productive you’re but profits is telling you how efficient you’re. If your cashflow is greater than your profits, means that you’re producing a lot BUT you’re NOT being effective enough so you should what can you do to improve this situation. As a rule, you want to be more effective than productive.
«Is my cashflow growing faster or slower than my profits?»
This question gives you an idea about where are you centering your efforts. Think about how do you prefer to be, very productive and poorly efficient or poorly productive but super efficient.
«Which assumptions I’m making that are giving me those results?»
The results that you’re getting are simply a reflection of your decisions and those decisions are based on your assumptions. So… if you don’t like the results, then check your assumptions!.
«Is my salary above or below the market rate wage?»
If your salary is underneath, means that if in case that you should hire somebody to do your work, he/she will receive more money than what you’re getting right now.
¡Congratulations! If you have reached this point means that you’re really interested in growing your business and getting big profit from it! In Evo we love the people with your mindset! So come in, click the button below and check how can we have fun working toghether!
