4 questions to enable you to extract maximum leverage from your marketing investment

4 questions to enable you to extract maximum leverage from your marketing investment

May 28, 2018 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy

Imagine you are faced with the task of joining two pieces of wood.

What information are you likely to need before deciding how to go about the task?

How big and important are the pieces? Are they structural weight bearing? Is the joint going to be seen? And so on.

So: you have the information; you can then decide how you go about the joining.  Do you nail? Screw? Glue? Combine rebate glue and screw? Countersink the screw? And so on. You have many options, but without the contextual information, you cannot make an informed decision that will give you the best outcome.

Sometimes this is easy, instantaneous, other times it will require more time and research to get the right answer.

Figuring out your marketing programs is no different.

How are you going to allocate your limited resources across all the possibilities that face you?

Marketing has only one purpose, to generate revenue. Sometimes it is revenue today. Sometimes tomorrow, next month, next year, next decade. If you cannot see a connection between the marketing activity and future revenue, stop now!

 The challenge is to know enough to ask informed and intelligent questions, and be able to separate the bullshit from the good answers.

This ‘marketing game’ is full of sellers of new shiny toys that are ‘guaranteed’ to be the answer to all your commercial problems, delivering you rivers of cash.

In order to help you separate the bullshit from the reality, there are four tools you can use to do the separation, which will assist you too see the connections to revenue.

They all are interdependent, none by themselves is of great value, and together they are a powerful way of thinking about your business.

The 4 seem simple at first glance, but in reality very complex questions, that in combination will give you the beginnings of an answer. The rest will come with experience and domain knowledge.

  • What problem can I solve for a potential customer, or put another way, how do I add value?
  • Who is my ideal customer?
  • How do I apply maximum marketing leverage?
  • How do I make a profit?

 

When you have the answer to these four questions, you are ready to spend some money.

Not before.

However, once answered, it is never enough to stand still and think the answers tomorrow will be the same as today, and that the answer today is the ideal one. Business is iterative, you learn from doing, experimenting, doing it better next time. It is an evolutionary process, so long as you are careful not to bet the farm on a dud horse. These are all connected to each other, one without the other is of less value, and the impact of answering them all well is not just cumulative, it is compounding.

There is never one right answer, the interdependencies are huge, as are the options, it is all incremental, a process of improvement and no good answer remains the best one forever.

These four factors, and all the lesser things that hang off them, are compounding.

The twist is that they also compound in reverse, so you have to be prepared to try things, but get them off the table quickly when they do not work.

 

A little detail on the 4 questions.

What problem can I solve?

Unless you can solve a problem for someone why would they buy from you?

Albert Einstein, my senior marketing guru, said, amongst other things, “If I had an hour to solve a life defining problem, I would spend the first 50 minutes defining the problem, the rest is just maths’

So, do your research before you jump in.

The definition of how you solve the problem becomes your value proposition. In other words, how does what you do add value to the lives of those ideal customers?

If you cannot articulate that, you have nothing except price, and nobody wins a price war.

The solutions to problems come from being able to ask the right questions.

Seeing things others do not see, solving problems better than others, and sometimes seeing a potential problem before it is an acknowledged problem, highlighting it, and then solving it.

The classic case is the iPod. It was not the first MP3 player, and arguably it was not the best technically, but it did something no other mP3 player did. It put ‘1000 songs in your pocket’.  It articulated the problem that the product solved.

While others all talked about their technical superiority, the stuff the geeks thought was important, Apple just told us what consumer problem they solved.

Who is my ideal customer?

Who is your ideal customer, the one who will not haggle the price, who loves the product you sell, and proselytises for you? Knowing that person in great detail would be marketing and commercial gold.

Like all gold, it is hard to find, subject to all sorts of distractions and false starts, but immensely valuable when discovered, and discovery is usually incremental, rather than a ‘eureka’ moment. This means it is also a demanding challenge.

What is often also forgotten in the effort to define that ideal customer is that every customer also has an ideal supplier, one who meets all their needs, delivering value in excess of the cost to them. It is a two way street, and a relationship only prospers where there is value being delivered to both parties.

Defining your ideal customer is an iterative process, deceptively demanding, as it requires choices about who is not an ideal customer, and therefore excluded from primary consideration. Choices like this are challenging, but necessary, particularly for small and medium businesses which do not have the luxury of a big pot of marketing money, you have to get it right or waste limited resources.

Following is a list of 6 parameters you can use. Not all will be equally applicable in every situation, but it will pay to give each deep consideration.

Who: Is the demographics they may exhibit. Where they live, age, gender, education, job, and all the other quantitative characteristics that are available. These parameters are pretty much all that was easily available in any detail until digital tools came along.

What: are their behaviours. Do they go to the opera or rock concerts, perhaps both, do  they travel overseas for holidays, what sort of causes, if any, do they support, are they likely to demonstrate their beliefs publicly, or are they just internal. All the sorts of things that offer a picture of how they think, feel, and behave in all sorts of situations.

Where: will you find them digitally, as well as in the analogue (perhaps real) world, and what means can you use to make a connection. Are they likely to be avid users of Facebook, LinkedIn or other social platforms, are they comfortable buying on line, do they ‘showroom’ digitally then visit the physical retailer, do they get their news from Facebook and Reddit, or more focused news sites, or even, surprise, surprise, newspapers, radio and magazines.

When: will they be ready to buy? Customers are rarely ready to buy when you are ready to sell. Understanding the customer buying cycles, particularly in B2B and a larger purchase is critical.

Why: should they respond to your entreaties, to do whatever it is you are asking of them. What is your value proposition to them? What promise of a new and better tomorrow can you deliver? What can you deliver that is different and more valuable to them than any alternative? If you cannot answer these questions, it will come down to price, and winning a price war is a great way to go broke.

How: will you service the transaction, and the subsequent relationship that may emerge? This is usually down to questions about your business model and the ‘fit’ that has with the customer.

 

How do I make a profit?

Just as a successful young single male professional might opt for a red sports car, when 10 years later, with a family, kids, soccer practise, he might opt for a brick on wheels, you can have different business models to suit different circumstances and conditions.

Most small and medium businesses with which I have been associated give little if any thought to the business model, but it is of critical importance.

Are you retail, wholesale, franchised, subscription, digital, or some combination? All are different, working in differing ways, to allocate and absorb the costs and benefits that accrue. Being very clear about your business model, and being able to anticipate if a potential customer will fit is in some circumstances, a vital component of making a profit.

 

How and where do I apply Maximum Marketing Leverage?

Identifying the point at which you can apply Maximum Marketing Leverage (MML), or in other words, get the most productivity from your marketing investment is the point at which the previous three questions intersect.

Answering the three questions well requires a combination of introspection on your business, in combination with exospection, the examination of your business from an external perspective. The point where these two perspectives intersect is the best spot to apply marketing leverage.

Most will be familiar with the SWOT model of business analysis; this is one of many, and perhaps simplest of the many ‘Mental Models’ you can use to do the examination.  Porters 5 forces, Balanced Scorecard, BC matrix, Business Model Canvas, and many others are alternatives. All have their pros and cons, but the key point is that you give due consideration to them, as they will identify and clarify your point of MML.

The ‘maths’

All that has gone before, in Albert’s language, is the definition of the problem. Now we get to the maths, the way in which you apply the leverage.

Most small businesses rush straight to the tools of leverage without due consideration of the nature of the problem they want the tools to solve. However, once defined, pick a tool, or most often a combination of tools that best fits your point of leverage and apply them, recognising that there is no formula to give you thee exactly right answer, so you need to experiment  to find the best outcomes. The process of experimenting, will also give greater clarity to the 4 questions, which will in turn clarify the point of MML.

The choices you face are multitudinous.

Digital, analogue, which social platform, how much should be spent on Adwords, does Facebook work, how to use the automation tools available, what about email, letterbox drops, and so on, and on, and on. 20 years ago, life was much simpler, there were few choices, but there was also very few of the tools available that enabled the identification of the point of MML, so experimenting was far more costly and risky than it is now, to  the point where small businesses had very few options. Now you have plenty, the challenge is to use them in the best possible manner.

However, there are three things you should always remember, and apply.

  • Customers and potential customers move through a decision making process every time before they put their hands in their pockets. Sometimes this is almost instantaneous, as it would be in a supermarket doing the weekly shop, much of it is on ‘auto-pilot’. By contrast when buying a new car, house, or even considering a restaurant, the decision is usually much more considered, research is done, options considered, a short list compiled before a decision is make. This process happens in many ways, and can be influenced by the marketer using different tools, and combinations of tools at different times in the process.
  • The tools themselves are only as good as the message that is delivered. Whether you are writing an ad for the local newspaper or sending a series of emails to your prospect list, you need to be able to write and design a piece of communication that will engage the reader, give them the information they are looking for at that specific time, and lead them to the next point in the purchase process. In other words, in the vernacular, you need to be able to produce a variety of ‘content’
  • The one tool that should be in every toolbox is your own website. This is your digital home, the spot you own, from which you can communicate with your ideal customer under your terms. The trick of course is to have a website that accurately reflects the answers to the four questions and directs the tools to the point of MML. Most SME’s recognise the need for a website, and either lack the skills to do it themselves, or get a contractor to do it, usually without reference to the 4 questions. Then you end up with a nice looking but not revenue effective website. It is a vital but challenging tool to get right.

A few final but general points about running a successful SME, that are nevertheless vital but rarely  get enough attention.

  • Referrals are the best and cheapest form of marketing; it just takes time and effort to get to the point where current customers will refer you to others. Get this right, and many of your marketing problems will be solved, so it makes sense to have a formal referral process in place.
  • You must understand your ‘numbers’. The accounts, Cash flow forecasts, revenue, cost and customer analysis and forecasts. The Pareto principal, well known as the 80/20 rule applies in every circumstance. Sometimes it is 90/10, rarely is it 70/30.
  • Marketing cannot be left to the last minute, it is absolutely essential you identify your MML before you start spending your limited resources.
  • Social media is not free, despite the rumours, it costs not only in time and effort, as well as design costs to be effective, the quid pro quo is that you give over a heap of personal information that the social platforms then use to market to advertisers. There are no silver bullets in the quest for success.

 

 

 

 

 

How much do I need to spend on marketing my new business?

How much do I need to spend on marketing my new business?

May 22, 2018 | Branding, Marketing, Small business

This ‘How much’ question was posed to me recently in a networking group by a young professional who had just left the comfort of a large corporate firm to strike out on her own with a business partner. My answer: ‘Depends’. There is never a right answer to  this question, every situation is different, but there are a few foundation things that should be considered, and they all involve some sort of trade-off.

Time.

Time is our only truly non-renewable resource, so it makes sense to use it as productively as possible, depending on your definition of productive. For this new firm, while they have clients, they also have more time than they had working as corporate ‘slaves’ in a bigger firm, so they can choose to use it for marketing, developing their professional competence, which is after all an investment in their future, or they may even go to the pub. Early on it makes sense to invest some of the excess time in building their marketing and sales processes so that they can ‘feed’  the pipeline of potential clients.

Money.

Nobody, no matter how big, has sufficient money in the marketing budget to do all they would like. Therefore it is a matter of priorities and choices. Never easy. It is also true that the way you see marketing makes a potentially huge difference. Seen as nothing more than a necessary expense, it is just a chunk of money going out the door. Seen as an investment, marketing becomes something different, by definition. While it costs money now, it is an investment in future prosperity. By gaining clients that will continue to deliver revenue over a longer period, without having to spend on getting them through the door again in the first place, the initial investment will deliver great returns. My answer is also always tied up  in the need to use available money as productively as possible, which means that before you spend a zac on the communication end of the marketing spectrum, make sure you have the definition of  the ideal customer and your value proposition in place, so you can accurately target both the potential clients and your messages.

Expertise.

Expertise you can buy in, but it is dangerous to buy in expertise in a situation where you do  not know enough to adequately make the choice between alternatives.  This applies  perhaps more than anything else the strategic/marketing end of  the service continuum, simply because there is rarely one right answer, and  there are no external professional standards to be met. This means that a  marketing professional may just be highly professional about marketing their  business, but hopeless at marketing yours. If you buy in expertise before you know what expertise you really need, you risk getting a plumber when you need a carpenter. Alternatively, you can buy in the expertise to assist define just what it is you do need before you make the investment in marketing activity. The instinct these days is to talk to a so called ‘digital marketer’ whose business it is to sell you digital marketing services, whether or not that is the best use for your money. It pays to be sure, do some serious introspection before you jump. This is not usually an instinctive thing for most, in this case they are lawyers, not marketers, and marketing remains a ‘dark art’ outside their experience and expertise. Marketing has to be at the front of your mind, not just during the start-up phase, but for ever more. While the specific activity that drives client engagement can be turned up or down according to the capacity available to service the business, marketing is a key part of the DNA of every successful business.

Create processes.

Everything in business is a part of a process, no matter how big or small it may be. Therefore the things that are repetitive should be ‘routinised’ as much as possible so they happen with minimum resources, and optimum performance. In other words, they are a productive use of the time and money allocated. Just as providing a professional service requires a process to be followed, so it is with marketing activity. You can automate just about everything these days, which is where a mistake is often made, as automating a rubbish process just leaves you with automated rubbish. There is  no substitute for mapping out what you want to achieve, and the best way to achieve it, piloting and refining, before you automate. Remember also  that automation by definition, removes the ability to be agile in the face of something not considered in the automation phase.

Prioritise ruthlessly.

We only have so much capacity, spreading it thinly just ensures nothing gets done properly. Far better to do less things, well. Therefore, I absolutely subscribe to, and work with clients to prioritise their investment of time money and expertise. You can do this in any number of ways, two of which I like and use. The first is the well known urgent/not important matrix,

 

 

 

 

 

The second is an aggressively culled priority list. Record the top 20 priorities you have in front of you. Prioritise 1 to 20. Draw a line under number 4, or 5, and discard the rest into a ‘carpark’ of some sort, not to be considered at the moment, but too be kept aside, as being in your top 20, there is some importance to be attributed. Ensure that as a part of  the process you have performance measures built in so that you know which parts of your marketing are working, in which case you double down, and which are not in which case you stop, and either save the investment or use it in the doubling down.

Finally.

Find activities you are happy to do, that you can feel proud of, and do  them. You are in business for yourself, being happy is often hard as the pressures can be substantial, so make the effort to find the elements  of the wider role you have taken on, and do those that you enjoy, are good at, and which add value to your business, and outsource the rest, having done sufficient research to ask good questions of potential suppliers.

The two crucial leading indicators of business performance.

The two crucial leading indicators of business performance.

Apr 18, 2018 | Governance, Management, Small business

‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. So said Steve Jobs and he was not only right, but just one of a long line of people saying similar things.

Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Mark Twain, and my personal favourite, a marketing guru of great stature, although known for other things, who said ‘Everything should be as simple as possible, no simpler’. Albert Einstein.

It is also very useful to have a few simple but reliable forecast measures that give you a ‘heads-up’ about rough waters ahead.

Therefore when doing a StrategyAudit of a business, I try to distil everything down to its most simple form. That way not only can most (including me) understand it, but there is less room for error, misunderstanding, evasion, finger pointing, and all  the rest that goes on.

Two words capture the essence of a successful business, irrespective of size, structure, location and market. Having done many StrategyAudits, using a whole range of tools, some simple, some pretty sophisticated, there are just two words that underpin everything.

‘Cash’ and ‘Flow’.

Let me explain.

Cash.

Cash is the lifeblood of every business. Every activity, in one way or another is connected to the consumption or generation of cash. When you are doing something that is not contributing in a positive way to cash generation, even if it costs cash (such as advertising), stop. It does not matter how grand the vision, how well meaning the mission, how creative the advertising, how innovative the products, unless it generates cash in excess of its cost, stop.

So, I look at the cash. How it is managed, committed, deployed, forecast, leveraged, and disbursed.

The three fundamental parts of an accounting system are the cash flow statements, Profit and Loss statement, and Balance Sheet.  Both the P&L and Balance Sheet can be ‘managed,’ just look at Enron, Dick Smith, FAI insurance, State Bank of SA, One-Tel, and a host of others for proof. However, look closely at the Cash Flow, and without sophisticated fraud, it cannot be ‘managed’, and if there is fraud, a close look will reveal it fairly quickly to an experienced eye.

Probably the easiest way of judging the health of a business is to look at free cash flow. Cash coming in – cash going out, excluding capital expenditure. If positive, at least there is some hope, negative, start resuscitation immediately, or run for the lifeboats. This assumes a reasonable period of time. My recommendation to most clients is a rolling 13 weeks. Long enough to be somewhat immune from the day to day stuff, but short enough to give a fair indication of the overall health of the place quickly while giving enough time for any necessary corrective action.

Every business I work with is strongly encouraged to do a weekly rolling 13 week cash flow forecast. Those that resist strongly usually end up former clients for one reason or another. Once set up, the routine makes it easy, takes little time, and removes a whole lot of stress.

Flow.

This is probably a bit unexpected, but when you think about it, every business is made up of many processes, sub processes, and sub, sub processes. Draw a ‘map’ of your sale to cash process, and there are a number of steps, preparation and dispatch of the order, proof of delivery, invoicing, supporting book-keeping steps, and debt collection. Similarly, all the processes in your business have stages, points at which there are necessary interventions, potential changes, interruptions, delays, mistakes, rework, and a myriad of admin things and performance measures that need to be completed.

Keep drawing process maps and see how they become entangled, are dependent and interdependent, and can create uncertainty, opacity, and opportunity for error, as well as being necessary to get the work done.

I think about flow as you would a river. Water flows smoothly and predictably while there is no interference, but insert a rock, or bend, or shallow bits, and there is interruption to the flow. The greater the interruption, the more unpredictable the flow, and the more energy is required to move the water through. The velocity of the water through a part of the river is a measure of the productivity of that part, and again, the greater the interruption, the less the productivity.

I therefore look at the ‘flow’ of processes through the business, and seek to simplify, and accelerate all of them by removing the ‘rapids’. It is an incremental and never ending task, but one that delivers great financial and emotional rewards. In most cases, there has been little process mapping done, so that becomes a priority in any improvement project, but the current state of the ‘Flow’ is a very good indicator of the health of the business.

When you need a bit of help considering these two crucial performance indicators, give me a call.

‘Burley’ is a great metaphor for marketing

‘Burley’ is a great metaphor for marketing

Mar 16, 2018 | Marketing, Small business

 

As a kid, I used to go fishing with my dad sometimes, usually off the rocks around Sydney’s northern beaches. He was a good fisherman, often came home with dinner when others around caught nothing.

His explanation of his relative success was hard for a kid to understand, a combination of the tides, moon, time of year, the spot he picked, and some mysterious concoction brewing under the house called ‘Burley’.

Burley he told me, was a brew he varied depending on the fish he thought would be around, making it easier for them to find him, and willingly receive bait that was irresistible, but hiding a hook.

Not  a bad metaphor for marketing.

Focus on the most likely target given the conditions

Go to where they might be found

Spread around something irresistible to them to attract lookers

Ensure you have the right bait when they turn up

Heat up the pan to receive the ‘incoming’.

 

Marketing ‘burley’ is a tricky thing to get right, so find someone with the experience and knowledge to  ensure your mix works.

Image credit: Hatalina via Flikr

7 tips on  how not to be boring while presenting.

7 tips on  how not to be boring while presenting.

Mar 6, 2018 | Communication, Marketing, Small business

As small business owners, we are often called on to speak publicly, and like most people, find that intimidating, and for some uncomfortable to the point of nausea.

There are many pieces of advice on how to structure a presentation, thousands of them on the web, and a few contributions from this site, but little about ‘how’ to speak beyond the very good advice on body language.

For most the degree of discomfort is brought on by fear.

Fear of making a dill of yourself

Fear of forgetting the important bits

Fear of boring your audience.

All can be addressed using a few simple things, that will not remove the instinctive fear of being the one outside the herd that in evolutionary times became a tigers breakfast, but at least will give you a few tools to beat the beast off.

Do not repeat to them what they already know.

Most speakers just repeat lots of stuff in the public domain, things most already know, or they pimp their companies and products.

Both are as boring as batshit.

You have been given the privilege of controlling the time of others, and the status of expert by whoever is organising the event you are speaking at, do not waste it by repeating boring stuff. Even if all you do is reverse the usually quoted factoids, and adding a bit, it will be more interesting. For example, instead of just stating ‘8% of transactions are now carried out ‘on line’,  say ‘while 92% of transactions are still carried out in person,  75% of purchasers do extensive research on line before you see them in the shop. How should that impact on your marketing strategies?’

Do not speak about things where you have only superficial knowledge.

Tempting as it is for some of us to speak at the opening of an envelope, resist the temptation unless you can genuinely impart some relevant and useful knowledge to the audience. Knowing you have valuable information that others will benefit from makes the process of imparting it that much easier.

Do not read to them what they can see.

Reading slides back to an audience is an absolutely sure fire way to ensure they all dive for their phones to check the Facebook update or what their  mother in law is doing for dinner. I cannot believe how often I see this, we have all seen it, yet  many allow themselves to knowingly bore the pants off the audience by doing it themselves. It is simply a response to fear, we can wrap ourselves in a sheet that excludes others, removing the presentation obligation to ‘connect’ with the audience.

PowerPoint has destroyed our instinct to be interesting when we speak, to hold the audience’s attention.

Resist the siren song of PowerPoint. When you use it, which is in most cases, always use it as no more than a memory jogger and to keep you moving along to a plan by having no more than a couple of words on a slide, but using it as a way to communicate in simple graphic manner the point that you are currently making. If you cannot condense that part of the discussion to a single graphical representation, remove the whole thing.

Do not just give them your opinion.

An expert speaker always has a point of view, but to be truly persuasive, that point of view will be based on solid facts, research, and data. Deliver that data, while articulating how you used it to form the views you have. Demonstrate the links between cause and effect. Failure to do this effectively is a large part of why we no longer trust politicians. While they are often slick talkers, they just give us opinions, and mostly we know they are not their private opinions, just the convenient line of the day, without any foundation of relevant fact and cause and effect links.

Do not stand still.

Particularly, do  not stand still behind a lectern.  When speaking, the stage is your domain, dominate it by moving around, using it to make your points, engage with the audience, match your voice to the point you are making, and be interesting physically. Back to evolutionary psychology, the tiger will have less chance at breakfast if the target is moving, so  move!

Do not just recite, tell stories.

Imagine your audience is one of your kids to whom you are telling a bed-time story, and you want more than anything for it to be memorable for them. To be memorable, every story has a structure. A beginning, an end, and a middle bit, drama, tension,  villains, heroes, laughter and sadness, suspense, and a point that you are trying to make. Use as many of them as possible in your presentation, with particular attention to the point to be made.

Do not end with thank you for coming.

You have been given the status of expert, someone worth listening to, by whoever has organised the gathering. Do not surrender that status by thanking the audience for all being there, for their attention. Instead, demonstrate why the investment of their time has been worthwhile, by telling them what to do next.

When you manage all that, I guarantee that not only will you have been of benefit to the audience, you will probably have enjoyed the experience, at least just a bit, and you will be better for the practice next  time.

 

8 clichés every entrepreneur should consider

8 clichés every entrepreneur should consider

Feb 5, 2018 | Customers, Management, Small business

Clichés become clichés because they make sense, and are widely used, so they pass into the language. Unfortunately, common usage often makes them appear flippant, a throw-away line that means nothing.

That they take on that label does not make them any less valid, in fact, becoming a cliché is almost like getting an endorsement for wisdom.

Following are 8 that entrepreneurs embarking on an enterprise, whether it is the next Uber,  starting a cleaning business in your local area, taking on a franchise or a multi-level selling ‘opportunity’, that you should consider.

 

Cliché 1. Know where, and who, you are.

Irrespective of the starting point, starting a business is a journey. If you are going to start a business, recognise  that it will consume you if it is to be successful. It is not like being an employee, irrespective of results, at least for a while, you get paid to turn up.

Not so now.

Starting a business takes a heavy toll on not just your financial resources, but your resilience and personal relationships as well. Being prepared for the long hours, stress and uncertainty is a good start, you must know yourself well.

Cliché 2. Know where you want to go.

Many become tangled up in visions, missions, values, business purpose, their Why, and all the other ways that have become ‘popular’. All are valid, all have their place, but I ask my clients a simpler question; What does success look like? When you can answer that question, you have at least enough of an idea to start, but if the answer is purely financial, you need to do some more thinking.

Cliché 3. Have a plan.

There are lots of clichés about plans. Prominent amongst them are: ‘no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy‘, and  ‘failing to plan, is planning to fail‘ and both are right. Point is that unless you have a plan, you have no chance of understanding and managing your progress towards the goal, which tactics worked, and which ones did not. All crucial pieces of information. There are many planning models, each with their own emphasis, and I always recommend that you use several in the thinking part of the planning process as a way to ensure that things do not get missed.

Cliché 4. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Planning is the easy part, the hard bit is to take action. Without action, nothing happens, nothing!

Taking the steps, getting outside your comfort zone is why you are going into business for yourself.  Curiosity, an idea, recognition of a need you can fill, a problem you can solve, all are great reasons to go into business. All it takes is the first step, and it is always the hardest.

To add another cliché to the list: ‘hope is not a strategy’

Cliché 5. To succeed, you must have something others want.

Success in business is dependent on being able to deliver superior value to customers, at a cost that delivers you a margin. If you cannot deliver value, almost always the solution to a problem, which can be anything from a more efficient power station, to a better tasting tub of yoghurt, to on time delivery, or something no-one else can do, at a price the customer is happy to pay, you will  not survive.

Tough but simple.

Cliché 6. People have to know you are there.

Even if you do have the next greatest thing, you cannot sell it without  others who may need or benefit from your gizmo knowing about it. Marketing is essential. The process of gaining understanding how you will deliver value to whom, while making a profit on the way is make or break for every business, particularly a new one as generally you cannot afford to make mistakes. Selling skills are as important. Not only do you need to sell to your potential customers, but to the banks, your suppliers, and often even your partner. If you cannot sell, and do not want to learn how, do not go into business for yourself.

Cliché 7. Watch the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

There are two aspects to this cliché. Cash is the lifeblood of every business, and you need to watch your cash the way a mother bear looks after her litter.

The first is to do a regular, I strongly recommend weekly, cash flow forecast. Make it a part of the way things are done in your business. At first it may seem strange, but it pays off, as you will always know your cash position, which will be a huge stress reliever. As a side benefit, trading while insolvent is illegal, and the simplest measure of solvency is can you pay your bills as they fall due.

The second is the behaviours you are setting out to build. Results come from the way things are done, as well as ensuring the right things are done, and if you want your staff to be as frugal with your money as you are, you have to  build, that behaviour deliberately. A weekly cash flow forecast with the appropriate level of staff engagement and contribution is a very good way to start.

Cliché 8. Work on your business, not just in it.

The ability to see your business as others  see it, customers, potential customers, and competitors, is essential to success. To have that external perspective, you must be able to extricate yourself from the day to day pressures of getting stuff done. It leads on to what could have been an addition the list, ‘do what is important, but not necessarily urgent’. Knowing what is important to the long term health and prosperity of the business is more about how others see you than it is about responding to those unimportant but seemingly urgent  things that pop up every day.

So, remember, all that glitters is not gold, but good advice can be.