"Working with Myra has been great, but humbling. I have been in business for decades but have never thought of doing some of the most basic "business" things. For example, I never looked at my business structure to make sure it was the most profitable model."
Jess, Wellness Industry, CA
No one thinks they need a business audit.
And then they say they wish they had done it sooner.
Small business owners are notoriously too close to the business to identify it's weaknesses. Quite often they are running a business for the first time. They are wearing too many hats. Does this sound like you? If so, you can't know what you don't know. This combination leaves you vulnerable and at risk.
What is a business audit? In this case, it is having someone who is dedicated to the success of your business - with first-hand experience starting and running a handful of her own small businesses - come in and look for areas of weakness. Those weaknesses become opportunities for improvement. Getting new business isn't the only way to increase revenue.
The audit can be as simple as an in-depth interview with you, the business owner, or diving in deeper where I look into different departments, review reports, and chat with employees. I will have my questions hat on curious about the entire business and how it is functioning interdepartmentally and as a whole:
-
Is your brand tailored correctly to your target market?
-
Have you identified your target market accurately?
-
What is your brand's market presence?
-
Are you managing your books the right way?
-
Is your price point too high or too low?
-
What opportunities are being missed with your customer service?
-
Are you providing opportunities to upsell, and/or gain repeat business?
-
Are your operating hours the right hours or are you missing business?
-
What is the customer experience like?
-
Is your copy written to do its job?
Then I boil down what I have learned and I find that there are a few missed opportunities. Sometimes these opportunities are small, but tweaks can have a measurable impact. As we make tweaks to your business structure, your post-sale customer service and/or tighten up your approach to marketing- we secure revenue.
One business owner I worked with told me that she didn't need an HR arm for her business... because she had hired her friends. Within the first round of interviews, I found they were all protecting her. The owner was so stressed all the time that none of them felt they could tell her what was going wrong or how they were doing. They were burnt out and on the verge of resigning. They loved her but they couldn't keep going for much longer.
Another company I worked with had no idea how much profit was being made. This happens a lot. Some don't know how much revenue comes in. They just know that they can pay their bills, and that's it. These companies are usually just breaking even. This type of management stye tells me that they are missing opportunities to streamline and/or grow, and become profitable. They can run like this for years, even decades missing simple opportunities to increase revenue and become unstuck. Can you imagine after years, being told that if you had just made some tweaks you could have doubled or tripled what your business could afford to pay you?
One of my favorite exercises is running different business-model scenarios. A recent client had been in business for over 2 decades and never made more than enough to just get by. I ran different scenarios changing business hours, tweaking staffing, and a few other changes to his model and was able to show 3 other similar options that would yield profit previously unimaginable. Any of the presented models would take him from breaking even to impressive profitability. Your businesses model can be the difference between stagnation, failure or success.
What do these business owners have in common? Most of them don't have degrees in business or MBA's, nor were they trained to run a business. They are lawyers, contractors, designers, health professionals and artists. They are people who saw a need and filled it. They are ideas-people who took action. They are impressive, have a great work ethic and passion. They started their businesses - a feat in itself worth celebrating. But to reap the real benefits of being a business owner, they need an additional set of eyes that understands the plight of small businesses, the inherent challenges, and how to address them. These business owners need to know how to get to the next level. A good small business consultant factors in the whole picture of your business, and then advises from that informed perspective.
"I first had the pleasure of working with Myra when she served as Lead Business Strategist for my previous employer. She played a critical role in helping our small grassroots team evolve into a focused and legitimate organization, that more than doubled in size during her tenure.
Myra established the foundation of the company’s HR, Payroll, Accounting, Client Contracts, and team structure while recruiting and onboarding new team members and serving as the business’s guiding beacon. With Myra‘s assistance and expertise, the business soon became a more efficient, legally compliant, and strategic organization with a focused path toward financial and operational success!"
JP, Senior Designer, FL
Stats
Why do these statistics matter?
Just like we beg our children to learn from our mistakes- we need to learn from those who have come before us.
The margins between success and failure are often very small.
Save time, money and protect yourself from failure. We need your small business. It matters!
How valuable is a repeat customer?
The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
What's the most important part of a business?
Marketing. How much do you really know about marketing? Is it enough? Ask yourself this: When is the most important time to focus on marketing? Unsure? Call me.
The END of globalization?
Do you know what's going on? There are reasons to be concerned. There are reasons to be excited. Is your business thinking about the economic trends that WILL affect it? Are you prepared? You need to look up from time to time and make sure you're on the right path.
Top 5 reasons small businesses fail:
Poor planning, poor financial management, ineffective marketing, lack of customer service focus... ineffective leadership. Do you know what your businesses weaknesses are?
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The Numbers...
If you don't know your numbers, how are you making decisions?
Numbers get me excited. But to my great surprise, most of the owners I work with don't feel the same way. I don't need them to learn to love numbers, but what I do need is for them to understand how the numbers matter.
Numbers drive decisions. Numbers set targets. If you don't know how much you need to earn, how do you know how many items you need to sell each day?
How do you set your goals?
Small business owners commonly make this mistake, and when their month or quarter shows dismal results, they then look to try to enact change. But it may be too late. Most SB's don't have a pile of money in the bank. Time can't be wasted.
Running a business is about knowing your numbers and knowing how to use them. Numbers instruct you/your team on what to focus on.
Ask yourself:
-
Are you/your employees clear on how many sales they need to make in a week?
-
Are you clear on how running a sale will affect your bottom line?
-
Do you need to adjust your service hours?
Very often the first place we find money isn't in increasing revenue but just in working line items. We work the rows on the spreadsheet making sure each one is tight - and small sums over many rows add up to more profit.
If you aren't reviewing your numbers monthly... if you aren't setting goals based on your prior performance, we need to chat.
Let's find you some "free" money.
Branding, "Full-Circle" Marketing & Advertising
There is only full-circle marketing.
Marketing is multifaceted, should be fluid and responsive and is a crucial point of the foundation of any business. It doesn't matter how great your product and customer service is, if not enough people know about it. And it is often under invested in leaving money on the table.
Branding, marketing, and advertising overlap. So let’s talk about all of them.
-
What is branding?
-
Why can developing your brand be crucial to a business's success?
-
How exactly do you develop a brand?
Done correctly, branding is "the soul" of your company. It’s how your customers feel while interacting with your brand.
-
Do they identify with it?
-
Do they feel they belong when they interact with it?
-
Does it understand them?
-
Does your return policy make them feel it is safe to take the chance on a purchase?
-
Does your customer service leave them feeling valued?
In a culture that is spoiled for choice, it can’t be overstated, branding is more important than ever before.
Now let's talk marketing. I practice something called "Full Circle Marketing".
Marketing has to consider every way your business interacts with its customers. It is getting people interested in what you have to offer and making them feel good about it. No- really! It is about transferring emotion. That's what drives customers.
This starts with your brand as the guide, then reaches out into the world through marketing - word of mouth, flyers, your website, coupons, interactions with your customers/potential customers, integrity of the product or service you offer, all the way through how well your return policy is carried out.
Full-circle marketing knows that too many weaknesses in the interaction cycle equal a missed opportunity and/or a lost customer. A 10% deficit across multiple areas equals trouble.
If your marketing effort stops short of customer service, all of your external efforts may be killed by that crabby receptionist of yours.
-
Did your website not load quickly enough?
-
Did the visitor get confused navigating it?
-
Did your brand voice capture them on the top of your homepage and leave a strong clear impression on them of who you are and what you offer?
-
Did your materials set the expectation and then under-deliver?
The good news is that this is a well-worn path. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. You do have to be comprehensive in your approach. If you are, you will reap the benefits. Now, advertising.
Advertising begins as a science, turns into an art and back into a science.
Okay. Let's dive in a little deeper. First, identify your specific reason for advertising - the goal of the ad. Is it to get them to buy your new seasonal item? From that goal, you begin the creative. What type of ad will make them want this product, now? How do you incentivize them buying it now? What photography will help with creating desire for this item? What makes your product more attractive than your competitors? Can you see how the goal has informed the creative?
I see a lot of small business ads on Instagram that miss the mark. The photography doesn't tell me what to focus on, the motion of the video doesn't create curiosity, and the editing doesn't understand how to tell a story.
Successful ads combine strong creative with the principals that drive human nature. How many times does a potential customer need to see your ad before they are compelled to act? Over what span of time?
Do you see how it’s impossible to separate the business strategy and the creative? Yet this problem abounds in small business. Why? They don't think like marketing agencies.
The last step here is the data. After running the ad, you analyze how well it did. If it tanked, you have some work to do. If it performed well, it's time to create another in its image.
Agencies employ specialists and they make them work together- the graphic artist who wasn’t taught about business strategy with the MBA who was taught very little about art and the creative. Together they wrestle and eke out the balanced approach- the creative driven by business psychology.
Most small start-up businesses grossly underestimate the importance, and cost - of effective advertising. They approach advertising based on gut feelings, and they don't track performance. Successful marketing equals a successful business. Want proof? Have you seen business models that are about peddling junk? How do they do it? They bombard you with marketing. And it works. People buy the junk.
(Click here for a great book for creatives that want "a framework for their concepts to succeed".)
Click here for an article on Social Media Marketing.
