After years of building businesses , watching other businesses grow into unicorns , failing forward and being an entrepreneur –these are the 5 key insights on how to grow a successful business
- It’s all about the right people – build a great culture
- It’s all about the brand
- Know your numbers
- Do your due diligence when doing mergers and acquisitions
- Take action
1. It’s all about the People
As you grow – it’s all about the people in your team.
How do you hire them , how do you retain them , how do you upskill and reskill them ?
Recruiting
How do you find and recruit the brightest and best ?
Some of the questions to ask in hiring your team
- The Big Why – why do they want to join us and not other companies?
- Communication skills – can they communicate their thoughts well in clear concise manner?
- Technical, qualification and work experience – The CV stuff
- What’s their 10X-factor – the “umph” in their application
It’s not all science.
- People who do amazingly well during interviews – underperform
- People who are ok during interviews – outperform
The 3 months probation period is key – use it!!
Retaining
The Culture of the business
Culture is key if you’d like to build, retain and grow a high-performance team.
What are the successful people doing?
Richard Branson , Apple , Google, Atlassian and Canva
They know that by treating their right people right and having a conducive and fun work environment, it will trickle down to their product development, innovation , customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
Their formula:
Happy employees = Happy customers = More revenue = More profit
How do you get your team to connect, communicate, collaborate , contribute , learn and grow together on a continuous basis?
Maybe this?
- Daily huddles – meetings between team members – to make sure they feel part of a team
- Water cooler chats -Weekly meetings with leadership team
- Monthly Town Hall – a relaxed event where you share key wins and make jokes.
- A blog for your group where we encourage our team to post and share stuff about them
- Objective – Share your vision, values and goals – and ensure they are aligned with our team
The goal is to ensure that your team knows your mission, vision and behaves in a certain manner according to your values and to get everyone on the same page.
BSI values – TREAT
- Team – No Finger Pointing Policy – Operational screw-ups happen. Don’t finger point!
- Respect Appreciate One Another – Say thank you and buy each other lunch!
- Energy – Work hard, play hard – Have regular meetups , forums , sports and lunches (maybe forums where we can share experiences – good and bad – collaborate learn and grow together .
- Action and adventure – Do things now, not later –Always be Experimenting – take risks (tour team has your back ) Experiment on new features/products that will drive company growth.
- Trust Open Communication – Be honest and open with each other. If you haven’t got trust amongst your team and stakeholders – it will be nigh impossible to survive
The goal is to ensure your team knows your pulse ! What makes you tick? What is your mission ? What is your vision ?
Bsi’s pulse is to help you achieve your generational legacy and by doing so build a $100m plus organisation within the next 5 years !
Every Town Hall should talk about your vision and “treat values”and repeat them until our team gets it and they can repeat it in their sleep.
2. It’s all about The Brand
Get your funnels and UX nailed!
Nail you digital strategy and expertise – become the centre of influence in your target market
Digital marketing is key – includes all our Google , LinkedIn and Facebook ads campaigns.( if you do it yourself look at Quick Sprout and Backlinko. )
SEO in terms of click throughs, funnels and copywriting, A/B testing, measuring clickthroughs and conversions .
Make sure all has a call to action
Always ask the questions
Why did it work?
Why didn’t it work?
Some tips
- Catchy headline that states the problem
- Reaffirm the problem
- Mention the solution
- Soft sell with call to action
- Provide customer testimonials
- Remove customer objection
- Provide bonus/money back guarantee, if any
- Hard sell and provide call to action
Special thanks to Haryzat Zulzahary for this formula.
Make sure the look and feel of the website and app is amazing – it is your shopfront and needs to cut through !
Do you have apps for clients to use ?
Build an app for your customers to use …. Make it easy for them to engage
Each member of the team has a KPI to create a Facebook/tiktok or LinkedIn post that gets at least 100 shares, on a monthly basis.
This led to many experiments on how best to generate shares which in turn leads to brand awareness.
Don’t do it yourself – get the best
Maybe this?
Maybe instead of a simple ad with body text of about 50-75 words, create an ad with 500-600 words of content complete with headline, copy and call to action.
3. Know your numbers
What you can measure you can manage
- How many leads to get how many proposals to lock in the sale
- What is your cost per engagement was consistently below 10c . Sometimes as low as 1c .
- What’s your margins
- What’s your break even
- What’s your cash flow forecast – what’s your runway
Here are some amazing calculators to help you know your numbers – BSI Health check
https://bsi.skillsoptimiser.com/BusinessHealth
4. Do your due diligence when doing m and a
Before making an opportunity and taking on an acquisition – analyse it – cheap often turns out disastrous ….. it’s a fine balance ….
Do you take a huge bite and chew like mad ?
The potential growth in top line revenue might be great but what about the costs and focus?
If decision is a bad one – cut early – and take your losses or punishment
- people management and leadership – are key – communication clearly your vision, goals and KPIs
- delegate and outsource – ux ,digital marketing
- Give people what they want and you will get what you want
- Know your numbers
- Do your due diligence and take action
I recommend
- reading John Maxwell’s books
- Doing a Dolam (diploma of leadership and management ) - lifelong learning will be your point of difference
- Being part of a forum where people collaborate learn and grow together
- Have a session with someone to get to know your numbers (dm me and I will do this with you – no charge! )
5. Take Action
The easiest way to start taking action - and the best thing you can give to a stakeholder - be it a team member, customer, supplier, alliance partner, investor, shareholder or friend ……
Is a warm introduction to a relevant person - otherwise known as a referral
My passion over the last 10 years has been Referron - Which has been a work in progress - with our new version launching last week
We have been building a free app or platform that enables you to easily
💥connect - by sending your awesome business card
💥refer - enable you to easily and seamlessly refer those that you know like and trust to your network who need those services
💥track - enabling you to track and measure your activity of connecting and referring so you can follow up - because what you can measure you can manage !!!
Here is my business Vcard created on Referron https://rfrn.link/ivank
