Owners Get Lost! And Grow Your Business.

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

An Interview with Dr Greg Chapman on taking time off for small business owners. The interviewer was Donna Page of Nett Magazine.

Q. The experts say taking a break is essential for mental well being and family life- how difficult can this be for small business owners?

Most small businesses depend on their owner’s being there- when they are not nothing happens. The staff look to the owner to solve all the problems and the owner brings in the business. So if the owner is away, sales fall and problems requiring the owner’s attention can’t be fixed until they return. That’s why so many businesses close over Christmas- it is the only time the owner can get away, and their staff must take their leave then as well.

Q. Can you please detail some reasons why small business operators don't take breaks?

Most business owners are micro managers- if they give someone else the work, they mess it up, and the owner spends twice as long fixing things. So that get in the habit of doing most things themselves, and anything they give to staff, they have to look over their shoulder to make sure that things are done they way they want. Even if they only go away for a short time, things don’t get done properly.

This is the owners fault as they don’t have systems in their businesses so their staff can run things when the owner is absent.

Q. From your experience, what are the problems associated with small business owners who do not take breaks and do you believe many do take holidays?

If the owners don’t take breaks, they end up burning themselves out. So most do take breaks, but their businesses do suffer when they are away.

Q. What strategies can be put in place by small business owners to ensure breaks are taken?

If owners put in place systems in their business, they can give much of the work they presently do to others. They also need reporting in their businesses to ensure that the work is being done when they are not there. All big businesses already have systems and reporting in place- or else they would still be small.

Q. Is slowing down the business a good strategy?

If you mean slowing down the business so they can take a break, that’s a cost to the business. So while the store is closed for business, you are still paying rent. If you can keep it open, and have staff properly trained in your systems, you can be making money while you take a break. After all staff get paid when they are on holidays, so why not the boss?

Q. If the owner takes a break, how can that help their business?

There is an old saying that owners need to work on their business rather than in it. When they take a break, they are not faced with the day-to-day pressures of their business. This gives them time to think. Not just about their business, but also their life goals. The break will also allow them to re-energise. Owners tend to come back from breaks with a new ideas and a new enthusiasm to implement them.

Q. What are the top 5 ways to make sure you get the break you deserve.

1. Start to delegate as many tasks as you can to your staff
2. Monitor your staff’s performance and provide training to support them
3. Create reporting systems – what gets measured gets done.
4. Have systems for all tasks in your business
5. Take short breaks before trying to take a long break

Q. Any final thoughts?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Remember all big businesses started as small businesses facing all the problems about taking leave from their business that you are. Everyone of them would have sort advice at some stage. Yes you will have to work to put all this in place, but then, you can take a holiday!

Learn how to make your business run without you Then you can Get Lost when ever you feel like it.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

A Winning Business Strategy - Losing

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Can you imagine a strategy for your business where you deliberately decided to come last? Does that sound crazy?

Most businesses struggle with strategy. Strategy is poorly understood and even more poorly executed. Strategy is all about positioning and not trying to win, or hit a six on every ball. Sometimes it is about surviving until the right ball comes your way, and then hitting a six.

That’s the strategy that Australian Steven Bradbury adopted in the final of the men’s short track skating in the 2002 Olympics. Australia had never won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. In the pool we are great, but on the snow, we are like the Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings. Our tallest mountain would be regarded as a foothill in the Swiss Alps, so our winter athletes have none of the natural advantages that the athletes in cooler countries have.

Under these circumstances, reaching the final was a great achievement for Bradbury, but he knew that he would be the slowest in the next race. He knew that on most occasions his competitors could out race him – but he also knew that in this highly aggressive sport, collisions were frequent. He was just hoping that if there was a collision taking out 2 of the skaters, he could pick up a bronze just by staying clear of the collision by holding a position at the back of the pack and waiting for his chance.

In this event, however, four skaters went down, and he was able to skate past all the fallen competitors to pick up the gold!



If this race was held again 10 times, in all likelihood he would not have picked up any medal nine of the times. He knew he could not win in a head-to-head competition with his more experienced rivals in playing their game. He would simply exhaust himself. So he played a different game. Not one that would work every time, but one that would work often enough to make it worthwhile for his more modest and realistic ambitions.

Having seen how the top skaters raced, he identified a weakness that he could exploit by positioning himself. It was not a strategy for the top ranked competitors, but one a competitor with less capacity could adopt.

Do you have a business strategy that allows you to compete with your bigger rivals, that exploits their weaknesses rather than trying to take them where they are strongest? One that does not exhaust your resources while you wait for your chance? If you deplete all your resources playing your larger competitors’ game, you will have none left to play yours.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Growing Your Business by Accident

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

All businesses go through predictable changes throughout their lifecycle. From being a solo-preneur to having 20 or more people in the business. At each stage there is a step change in the way the business needs to be managed, and until these changes are made, growth will be difficult. Many businesses have stopped growing and have deliberately shrunk because the owners did not know how to make these changes and how to handle the resulting stress. Unable to cope, they have retreated to the comfort zone that existed in the time when their business was smaller and easier to manage.

Often growth is accidental, not planned, and the owner starts employing many others to get the work done without having in place the structure to manage them. They continue to manage their business in the same way they always have, but find that the old ways don’t work in the larger organisation, and may even be counterproductive. It is like driving from your home to participate in Formula 1 racing, but continuing to drive your old sedan on the racing track, rather than changing the vehicle for the new conditions.

When considering the Lifecycle of a business the following milestone stages can be identified.



The first stage in a business’ growth is when a one person business starts regularly paying for assistance in routine parts of their business. That is they are using routine external support. At this stage, the support is part-time. This usually occurs at the Adolescence stage of the business, when survival is not considered to be an issue. Before then, the owner is trying to save money by doing everything themselves and don’t believe they have the cash flow to pay for outside assistance.

The second stage in the growth of a business is the first employee. This usually occurs during late Adolescence or early Growing Pains. At this point they are likely to be very busy and they can no longer avoid having full time assistance. During this stage they may in fact, increase their staff to four or five people. Having hired the first employee, the second and third are not so hard.

The third stage also occurs in Growing Pains. This is the point at which they may hire a salesperson to assist bringing in extra business to support the additional staff. A salesperson unlike other members of staff has a very different role and is more like the owner than anyone else in the business. They must be entrepreneurial and require different skills to manage.

The fourth stage, also in Growing Pains, is the appointment of a supervisor. For the first time, the owner does not directly control the work of their employees. There is an intermediary. During this stage, there may be other supervisors appointed, and the business can grow to 15 to 20 people.

The fifth stage is the exit stage from small business to medium sized business. This will be the Second Wind stage of the business where it is completely re-invented. Managers are appointed for the first time. This might start with a full time accountant. The issues become organizational and the owner finds their primary role is not as manager, or even entrepreneur, it is as a leader. Few small businesses make it past this point.

The risk for small business is when they wander from one stage to the next by accident. Without understanding the implications of their growth, they will struggle. However, when a business grows by design it is possible to avoid many of the growing pains.

This is an extract from The Small Business Achiever – Business Owner Brief Issue 119 where strategies on avoiding the mistakes of growth by accident are covered in detail.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Can Business Planning Ruin Your Business?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When coming of age at Melbourne University many years ago, Lygon Street was a favourite haunt. One of our regular restaurants was Il Gambero. Unfortunately, due to a recent fire, it is no more. While this is obviously, significant for me, why am I writing about it here?


What struck me particularly was an interview with Frank Di Mattina, the owner. He made a comment (see video) that I am sure would resonate with all small business owners.

“Unbelievably, the whole family… it was the first time we have been away from the business, we have been on a business planning seminar.”

This comment raises a number of questions.

Had they been in Melbourne, would the fire still have happened? Fire investigators believe it was started by an old $3 power board in the kitchen. The fire had started 40 minutes after the restaurant had closed for the night. So if they had been in Melbourne, the fire would probably have still occurred. It was an accident waiting to happen.

Would business planning have prevented the fire? The owners may well have done business planning before, but had they undertaken a business risk analysis and developed a risk reduction plan? For example, did they have as part of their plan regular electrical audits by a qualified electrician?

If they had a risk mitigation strategy and plan, was it followed? If it was not, was it because there was insufficient training or some other factor?

Should they ever leave their business again? They should be building a business that does not require them to be present all the time. There should be systems for all parts of their business supported by training, reports and audits to ensure compliance. If these elements are in place, they should be able to be absent from their business as often as they would like.

This is not the family’s only restaurant and I hope they will be back soon, if for no other reason, I just love their Scaloppini Funghi.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Competing with Your Business Owner Customers

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Let’s say your business was to supply landscaping materials to landscapers and then you decided to get in the landscaping business yourself as a side business. What would your landscaper customers think?

For materials may be as much as a third of the cost of a job. So when they see their supplier competing with them, they will believe that they will have a significant cost advantage over them. They would also ask: “Why should I be giving money to a competitor to take business away from me?”

Which is why, most businesses in this situation go out of their way not to compete with their customers, even accidentally, as can happen sometimes. For example, distributors will in most cases refer retail sales to their retail resellers, but sometimes they may end up supplying a retail customer who has had a poor retail experience.

However recently, Google decided to compete with some of its customers, and they are not happy! Fairfax and News, owners of Domain and Realestate.com pay Google millions of dollars for keywords to send searchers to their websites. Now Google wants to provide listings of real estate directly on google maps for free. This will directly undercut the businesses of two of its largest advertisers. Another issue will be poor quality control from this free service on the accuracy of these free listings with out of date information appearing as well as allowing scammers.

A former CEO of REA a competitor of Realestate.com said:

"Google is moving from being a search engine to a portal," he said. "Instead of sending you to other websites - which have paid money to be there on its listings - it is now serving up the end data itself. That then raises the question: why would you need to go to the other sites and why would they then pay Google money [for search key words].”

A Google spokesperson said they have received “great feedback”. I bet they have!

So if Google is giving this service away free, what’s in it for them? It is just one more free service Google offers to make it more difficult for competitor search engines to compete with it. Services such as free email, news, calendar, YouTube, and many others. As it expands, it will inevitably clash with those offering a paid similar service. If they are small, they can just ignore them, but it is more and more finding some hard boundaries and now Google seems to have taken the place of Microsoft in internet demonology and attracting the attention of the regulators.

If you are small like the landscape supplies business, there will be other suppliers who refuse to compete with their customers who will get their business.

There is a saying in business: “Stick to your knitting”. Business history is littered with examples of failures of businesses which tried to take over their customers knitting. While it may appear that the grass looks greener in your customers pastures, inevitably, there are just as many competitors grazing there as in your own paddock, and they will know much more about this paddock than you will.

Respect what your customers do, and help them be successful, and you too will be successful.

What do you think? Remember, the best commenters July 2009 will receive a $500 printer.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Hope is Not a Business Strategy

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

A record $90 million lottery has been announced for this week. Half the nation are buying tickets. Even my normally very sensible wife has asked me to buy a ticket, against my better judgement (although that is not the first time I have felt I have had to acquiesce to such things in the name of harmony at home, and I am sure it won’t be the last).

As someone who regards themselves as having good analytic skills, I find lotteries are an affront to commonsense. The only way they are commercially sustainable is that everyone on average loses. However with the odd ticket in a major jackpot and our annual flutter on the Melbourne Cup this is just a bit of fun for us. It is not our financial strategy. We are not banking on it to pay for our retirement, and our investment in it is petty cash, annually less than a nice night out.

Unfortunately, all too often, a lottery strategy is the one adopted by many business owners. That is something will turn up. One of their ads draw will draw in a whale customer. That their business gets profiled on a family talk show resulting in a huge surge of business. Maybe one time they do get lucky- but what happens next?

In most cases, not much. They blow their luck (like most lottery winners) and are back to where they started, because they were not prepared for it. They may have been depending on the luck, but didn’t expect it to happen.

Samuel Goldwyn once said to someone who commented that he had a lot of luck in his business “I agree and the harder I worked, the luckier I got”

Now that is the kind of luck upon which you can depend.

Luck starts with a vision, but doesn’t finish there. It must be backed with a plan. A vision without a plan is just a dream. How many of those have come true for you lately?

Your strategy is how you bridge the gap from your current state and your ultimate objective. So write out the key things you want to achieve in your business. This might be more profit or just more time off. Next describe your strategies for bridging these gaps. These would include your Marketing Strategy, your Business Structure or your Operations and People Strategy. If there are gaps you can’t bridge seek advice.

When you add an action plan to these strategies you have what I refer to as the Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

So with the new Financial Year just commencing, don’t just hope that next year will be better, plan for it.

Or just buy a lottery ticket and hope.

All you need to do now is to Empower yourself and take action ...

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Attention Small Business Owners – You can check out any time you want – but Can You Ever Leave?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Owning a business is a 24/7 job. Even when you are away from the office or store, it is hard to switch off. Almost everything you see somehow reminds you of something you need to do in your business.

You might be reading a book, and the hero enters a store that is selling in a way that gives you an idea for your business. The author may not own a store, but is likely to be very creative and wants to make their hero’s time in the store memorable in some way. Of course you would like that for your customers.

It is like the science fiction writer who dreams up all sorts of new devices to create a wonderland for avid science fiction fans. The funny thing is many scientists and inventors like science fiction, and are often inspired by the creativity of the science fiction writer who may have little or no science training. The scientist who reads about the idea then becomes intrigued by it, then obsessed, until they actually work out how to make it happen. There are numerous documentaries on inventions inspired by programs such as Star Trek.

When you leave your business at night, you too see ideas around you – what others are doing in the commercial world in other sectors, or even ideas dreamed up by TV writers. It is hard to switch off. The only time a business owner can switch off is when they sell their business when it becomes someone else’s problem.

However for most business owners they can check out – but they can never leave.
They are their business, and when they are not there- nothing happens. No-one wants to buy a business like this. Certainly, their family wants nothing to do with it, and the staff are just hanging around for a payout.

In order to be able to leave your business, you must have an Exit Strategy. The best time to create an exit strategy is when you start-up, but it is never too late.

Three things can turn your business into a Saleable Asset:

1. A Marketing System that generates predictable sales
2. A Business System that allows others to run your business without you
3. A Reporting System that enables you to manage your business when you are not there.

With these three systems you will be to check out from your business when ever want, and ultimately be able to leave it to some one else.


All you need to do now is to Empower yourself and take action ...

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The GFC and the Small Business Advantage

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

It seems every week there is news of more layoffs by large businesses. Feed into that announcements of burgeoning deficits and negative growth forecasts and it is no wonder that highly precious, but fragile commodity, business confidence is weakening.

The reaction from businesses when this occurs is to become risk adverse. It’s all very well to attempt to remain positive, but if the fundamentals are rotten, you just become like the Black Knight in Monty Python who has lost all his limbs and still thinks he can beat King Arthur. Therefore expansions are deferred. New projects are put on hold. Upgrades are delayed. With many businesses, the layoffs or liquidation, while directly as a result of the downturn, were often an accident waiting to happen. Decisions avoided until the cash flow pain made those decisions unavoidable. Evidence of this is being seen with the US automakers.

For small businesses, the impact is far less spectacular, however, it is still there. Until a few years ago, 70% of the employment growth came from small business which resulted in unemployment falling below 4%. While there does not appear to be a lot of evidence that small business is laying off staff in significant numbers, it does appear, with the fall in job ads, that they aren’t employing at the same rate.

However, there is reason that there should not be same doom and gloom in the small business sector as for large business. Larger businesses tend to be more highly financially leveraged and have tighter margins. These factors along with their larger market shares, mean they are the first to feel market shrinkage impacting on their bottom lines.

Without these pressures, small businesses are able to be more positive as long as they take steps to address the changes in the economy. This may mean repackaging their offers due to the changed market conditions.

They understand that while there is a lot to be concerned about, there will be oases of opportunity that they can uncover. One advantage of being small is that these oases don’t need to be large. (Small oases are uneconomic for big businesses and big ones are rare in a major downturn.)

While there might be a lot of desert between oases, if a small business can find one they can prosper for a long time while those around them dehydrate. These oases, niches in business-speak, may be different to the ones that exist in the good times, but they can be just as commonplace.

If you have a pre-existing niche, you may find that your oasis is turning to desert. If you stay where you are, you will feel the same pain that larger businesses feel: stranded as their green pastures die off.

Re-examine your strengths and look for the new opportunities that arise as the market place changes. How have people’s needs changed? They may not want to buy new equipment, but may be prepared to lease it. They will certainly need to maintain their existing equipment if they don’t replace it. People eat out less, but they still eat. How has your market changed and how can you respond? Small businesses can do this quickly. That is their advantage.

The oases will always exist and you may need a water diviner to find them, but sitting where you are waiting for an oasis to find you is wasting your advantage.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Driving Business Growth with Calculated Risks

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Business is all about confidence. Confidence that the risks you must take will have a high chance of success. The reason this is essential is that you must provide all the resources (time and money) to make the strategy succeed. Too often, businesses are timid with their actions, and are looking for a 2-way bet.

More tightrope walkers fall while using a net than those that don’t.

An example of this was a residential program I attended during my MBA course some years ago. The program was run by 3 university lecturers. Two of these lecturers worked full time for the university and one only part time, and had his own property development business.

Each year they ran a business game for the course participants. The participants would be placed in teams and act as directors of a company in competition with the other teams. As they only ran this program once a year, the lecturers would have a dry run of the game beforehand, the three competing against each other. Every time they did this practice run of the game, the part-time lecturer always won. So this particular year, the two full time lecturers out and out colluded to defeat the part time lecturer, but he still won!

At this point the penny dropped, and one of the two full time lecturers said, that’s why he drives a Porsche and we don’t.

What the part time lecturer did was take risks, just like he did in his business. He did not wait to have all the facts before he made a decision, and when he made the decision, he backed it. Not every decision paid out, but he quickly cut his losses when he saw it wasn’t working rather than obstinately throwing resources at something that was never going to turn around. As he knew he was taking risks, he was also more vigilant in the signs that it was working or not.

The other two lecturers, by the very nature of being full time, were conservative, not wanting to take a decision until they had all the facts, by which time, they had missed the opportunity. They made fewer mistakes, but also made less money.

You never score goals from balls you don’t kick.

So understand the risks you want to take, put in place measure to monitor the strategy, and once you take the decision, make a commitment to provide the right effort that success requires. Like the tightrope walker who is halfway across Niagara Falls, turning around and going back to where you came from is not an option. You should have made that decision before you started.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Problem with Business Targets

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

We often hear about targets and deadlines being set by organisations and governments that are never met. Most recently, there have been targets set for CO2 emissions reduction. The initial target equates to 34% per person reduction, and yet others are demanding targets double that. Even the initial target is heroic. (For example, 90% of Victoria’s power generation is from brown coal.)

Before that, most of the developed world signed on to Kyoto targets, and most missed by miles.

What is the relevance of this to small business? When you have targets with no mechanism to reach them, it is meaningless. In the case of governments, they often set ambitious targets to appease their political constituency and the smart politician makes these targets big, but sets them a long time in the future, long after they expect to be out of office. It might help them win the next term which is where their focus generally is, but at some point, like the widely missed Kyoto targets, reality comes home to roost, and a price must be paid.

When we set targets without a plan, it is almost guaranteed that we will miss them. If the plan is to do research to discover the answer (the government’s plan) rather than rely on proven strategies, we need to expect that it will take much longer, and there is a chance that it won’t work at all. (Which is why the government just loves 2020!)

When we set targets in small business, they should be ambitious, but we must have a mechanism to achieve them. If our target is to increase sales by 30%, we must have a plan to achieve it. Do we have a plan to increase enquiries- maybe a new advertising channel, or an alliance? Is our intention to increase our conversion to sales by improving our sales pipeline, or providing sales training?

If we don’t know how to achieve the target, the strategy would be to go get advice from someone who knows what strategies work. (For the government, this is not an option as on-one knows!)

So for each of your key targets, write down where you are today, and where you want to be in 12 months. For each gap, create a strategy and for each strategy write a plan to implement the strategy.

If you find this difficult, please use my free Mission Statement Tool on the Resources page of www.FivePillarsBusinessSuccess.com Now is the time to set your targets for the next year, but make sure you have a plan to back it up!

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Value of Your Big New Business Idea

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

I am often approached by people with a big business idea who want someone to pay them for it. How much is your big business idea worth?

Back in the early eighties, I worked for a year in the US for another company. Whilst there, I noticed that they had home delivered pizza. This was especially great in the winter when there was snow on the ground and I did not want to go out. It was when I first heard the Domino’s pizza slogan – delivered in 30 minutes, or its free!

This service was so taken for granted, that they talked of those dreaded areas in town which were pizza delivery no-man’s lands- outside the delivery area for any pizza shop. You wouldn’t want to buy a house there!

So what has this to do with great business ideas?

This was before the time there were any pizza home delivery stores in Australia. They didn’t exist. So I came up with the idea that pizza home delivery would work in Australia… if only I knew how to implement such a scheme. I was sure this idea was worth a lot of money.

Then I came back to Australia, but what do you think I did next? If you said nothing, you would be absolutely right. At that time, I had no idea how to implement such an idea, and there was no way I was going to quit a well paid job to risk everything on this great idea. Clearly there was one big impediment for me:

I was not convinced that I had the ability to make this idea work. It was safer for me to keep on doing what I had always done.

It was about 3 years later, Dino’s pizza home delivery started in Australia, which grew to be a national franchise which was within a few years sold for millions.

I had the idea 3 years before Dino’s started up. I had a first mover advantage, except for one thing…. I didn’t move! You can’t patent an idea. Someone else can have the same idea.

So how much is your great new business idea worth?

Nothing unless you do something with it. Prove the concept works. Set up a pronto franchise or a pilot. Once you prove the concept works, then the people with money will come along. People with money to invest in business are inundated with opportunities, and they would not invest in one without a track record, except with their own efforts and resources because that way they can capture most the value.

If you aren’t prepared to invest in your own idea, why should anyone else?

It’s not the idea that’s worth the money, it is the person implementing it, and if they aren’t implementing it, it will just remain an idea.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

A Vision for Success

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Many small business owners go into business by accident. They saw an opportunity and grabbed it. The original excitement of the opportunity and even some early success may have sustained them for a while, but sooner or later, the need for hard slog becomes necessary. What happens next can make a huge difference to your business.

When the hard slog starts, most business owners just keep slogging a way in the direction they started, using brute force to build their business. Long hours, lots of money spent on advertising, and sheer persistence. Then after a number of years, they find out what they have is not what they want. Only then do they step back and do what their smart colleagues do right from the start.

The smart business owner creates a vision for their business. This will be in alignment with their own personal objectives. It could be to retire in 10 years with a million dollars. It could that it will generate enough income so they need only work 3 days a week and can take 3 months off overseas each year. To achieve these personal goals, the business must meet certain goals – to produce the income required and to operate in a way that allows the lifestyle desired.

This vision for the business then must become more specific and describe what the business does, who it does it for and how it does it. The business must be built upon the strengths of the owners and the opportunities they see. At this stage, the vision may still be cloudy, but you must start somewhere. Only once this vision for the business has been created, can goals and plans be developed.

Creating such a vision can be difficult for many people, but there is a simple free tool that owners can use to develop their vision. The Mission Statements Made Easy Tool steps you through a process to create your own vision, and then enables you to produce a certificate that you print, frame, and place where you can see it everyday, so you will have a constant reminder of why you started your business, and where you are going with it.

With a vision clearly defined, when the slogging gets tough, the owner can step back, re-affirm their vision: that they are on the right track, or whether there is a better path to take to achieve their objective. With a vision, you have a compass for the business, so that the owner does not spend years building something that they don’t want.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Working Smarter, Not Harder

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

The idea of working smarter not harder is a mantra most businesses owners understand even if they don’t actually follow it. Small Business owners often believe that big organisations have this nailed. However, after an interesting time in politics this week, you can see that our prime minister has not got this nailed.

I don’t care what your politics are, no-one would disagree our prime minister works extremely hard. He also has a hard earned reputation as a micro-manager and a control freak. He appears very busy, but is he affective?

When you run a business as big as the country, you can’t do it on your own. However, the way it is currently run, all decisions are being made by Mr Rudd and his office. His ministers are being over-ruled and the advice of their departments ignored. Now the peasants are revolting!

How long can he expect them to work the way he does if he doesn’t value their input and expertise. Where this will end is the staff (the public servants) will go through the motions, doing just enough to keep their jobs, knowing that he will in the end change whatever they suggest and do it his way. Why would you put in extra effort if it is not valued and recognised. Note, in small business ‘staff’ also applies to your contractors and suppliers.

When a business owner, or even Mr Rudd, have a bad week like this, their response is usually to resolve to work harder. This ultimately ends up driving away their staff and destroying themselves. Do you really believe becoming more productive at being ineffective will improve your business? Does any of this resonate for your business?

So what should Mr Rudd do? Well he could learn how to work smarter by attending my

Get Your Business Into Gear This Financial Year – Business Owners Retreat

although I don’t think there will be enough seating for his retinue. Alternatively, here are a few steps he should take:

1. Step Back! Review where you are going so you can prioritise. Otherwise you will spend your time reacting to every event that could be handled by others. You will become a firefighter, rather than leaving your staff to fight the fires so you have more time to look at ways to stop them starting in the first place. By fighting them yourself, you will have implicitly told your staff that you don’t trust them, and think they are incompetent. If you really believe that is true, replace them, although most times, the fault lies with you.

2. Share your vision with your staff and align their personal goals with your business objectives. Remember, they will not be as driven as you because you get most of the recognition and rewards. Wherever possible share these with your staff. Don’t hog the limelight.

3. Clearly define their roles, responsibilities and authority and let them do their jobs. You can’t control everything. If you continually intervene, your staff will believe that this is not their role, no matter what you say and you will always have to do their jobs for them.

4. Manage your business by reports. This gives you time to work on strategy. You can use the reports to monitor performance.

5. Regularly review your progress and when the facts change, don’t be afraid to review your objectives. (Unfortunately this rarely happens in politics as they tend to lock themselves into ideological, as opposed rational positions. Don’t let this happen to you as a business owner.)

It is often easier to see what others are doing wrong and the impact that it has on them. Learn from them and if you want help working smarter, please find our more about my Business Owners Retreat, and how 2 business owners Doubled their business in a year!

May Your Business Be As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Why You Should Increase Your Prices & Why Most Owners Won’t

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Before I answer this, try answering the following question:

Why are You in Business?

People give all sorts of reasons. Often they refer to some higher purpose, such as helping people in some way or providing for some personal lifestyle needs. This is all very well and good, but all these objectives will be compromised if the one overriding purpose of any business is not met- that is to make a profit!

Why is making a profit so important? If you are not making a profit, you are just breaking even, or more likely, making a loss. (Even when owners believe they are making a profit, they often aren’t as they have not considered the sustainability of their business.)

If your business is losing money, your energies and resources for any other purpose will be drained. You can’t continue helping people if you are going out of business. Likewise, if your lifestyle business is making a loss, it won’t be a very happy lifestyle. So if your business is unprofitable, the chances are very small that you will achieve other objectives through your business.

So let’s agree that making a profit is the prime purpose of your business. What then are your options to make your business more profitable? You can:

1. Reduce your Costs
2. Increase your Sales

Pretty basic really. Lets look at the first – decreasing costs. This is a limited strategy as at some point, you will compromise your sales. Whereas, increasing your sales is a no limit strategy.
There are five strategies you can use to increase your sales. These are the Five Turnover Drivers:

• Increasing Enquiries
• Increasing Conversions to Sales
• Increasing the Average Value per Sale
• Increasing the Number of Times Someone Buys from You, and
• Increasing Your Prices

Good businesses will focus on all five turnover drivers, but the one most find hardest to implement is to increase their prices. Let’s look at why people don’t increase their prices.
When setting prices, businesses look at what their competitors are charging. If they charge too much, they know they will lose business because their competitors are cheaper. But…

Are these businesses really your competition?

Regular subscribers to the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief will already know who their competitors are. (Issue 101 – Standing Out with Your Points of Difference). If the people who you are comparing yourself with are not your true competitors, why should they influence your prices?

In Issue 102 of the Small Business Achiever I explain the fundamentals of how to increase your prices so that the fear of business loss will no longer trap you in the price taker role in which most businesses languish. In fact, this strategy will transform your business!

In Issue 102 of the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief find out:

The Easiest Way to Increase Your Prices

How to Start Getting Your Business Organised

Being Found on the Internet - Paid vs 'Free' Search

Get step-by-step advice that will improve your business every month.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Value of Knowledge

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When scouring the internet for articles, what we tend to find is half answers. They say the Truth is out there, but it sure isn’t easy to find.

The power of the internet is that it is a huge resource of human knowledge, but it is very disconnected and often highly unreliable. While we may become frustrated at this, we all know it is difficult to complain to anyone, especially when we are seeking free information. While there are good resources out there, the trouble is they tend not to be tailored for your specific needs, even if you can find them.

We have a choice-

We can continue to spend time scouring the internet to find that gem that is going to transform our business, for Free!

Or

We can put our hands in our pocket to acquire information we are confident that will provide us the information we need.

While the first choice may appear lower cost, it is not if you value your time. Particularly if you can’t find the gem you were seeking. Like the people who spend their weekends with a metal detector hoping to find gold in the outback, they are depending on luck, but luck won’t help if you are in the wrong place to start looking. They could consult a geologist on the best place to look, but they would prefer to “save money” and hope for a lucky strike.

Knowledge has a value. The price you pay may be your time to find it, it could be the cost associated through the purchase of a book, a course or seminar or paying for advice from business coaches. There is still a price you pay through the school of trial and error if you “save money” by ignoring all of the previous resources. Its the cost of blind alleys and time and opportunities missed. These costs are very real.

What would it be worth to you to achieve your two year goals in one? That’s how you value knowledge.

For those who are serious, and value knowledge, there is a new resource (that is not free- but not expensive either) that will provide you many of the answers you are seeking. This resource is the Small Business Achiever where you can find, in bite sized chunks, the small business advice you are seeking. The Small Business Achiever puts the “HOW TO” into how to.

Whatever the resource you choose is, decide this year to invest in yourself and your education. Create a budget for this and put aside 5% of your turnover. This is not an expense, it is an investment which you would expect to pay dividends many times the cost.

Define your knowledge gaps and seek out advice or education to bridge them, and don’t be afraid to draw on your budget to pay for it. That is what it is there for!

May Your Business in 2008 be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Year in Review

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

As the year draws to a close, it is an opportune time to have a look at the scorecard for your business. You know, the one you prepared at the beginning of this year with your 2007 goals? Did you have a scorecard with goals? How did you go?

If you did not have goals, the chances are, your results were much the same as last year and your business is pretty much where it was in 2006 and next year is looking like more of the same. This tends to be the result when you don’t set goals.

Maybe you did set goals. Did you have a plan to achieve the goals? If the answer to that question was no, the chances are you made some, but not all of your goals. The very fact that you wrote out your goals will have made a difference, because goals create a focus. However you also need a plan. That is, the steps you would take to achieve your goals. What strategies you would use, and the tactics you would employ to turn your goals into reality.

So, you had the goals, and a plan but still did not get the results you wanted? Did you actually carry out the plan? Did you track your performance against your plan? When you regularly refer back to your plan, you are far more likely to achieve your goals as this forces you to step back from the coalface and work on your business. When performance was less than expected, did you adjust the plan? While persistence is a virtue in business, the same cannot be said for hitting your head against a brick wall. Perhaps there was an easier way? Did you seek advice when things were not working? While there is a cost to getting advice, even if it is just your time, the cost of trial and error is many times higher, and very demotivating.

If you did not achieve what you wanted to achieve in 2007, when look back on the year, and the goals, the plans, the actions, the tracking and the revisions is there something you didn’t do that would have made a difference? If you want 2008 to be different you must do something different.

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, and expect something different to happen. Make 2008 different. Find out how in:

The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success

May Your Business in 2008 be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The King is Dead....

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

So you woke up last week and found that what was arguably the most business friendly government in living memory was gone. You may even have thought the sky was going to fall in. It might, or it might not. It almost doesn’t matter, if you know what you must do.

Yes all boats float on a rising tide, but the boats that move to deeper waters will avoid running aground if the tide turns. Whenever there is a change of government, some of the rules always change. Some for the better, and some for the worse. However, as long as they are the same rules for everyone, even a change for the worse can be an advantage.

In any business environment, each business must continually fight to attain and keep its position in its marketplace. You need to continually justify your value to your customers, and that they should continue to use your products and services rather than those of your competitors.

You should continually look at your offer, your prices and your costs. If there is a change of government, how will the changes they have proposed impact on your business? Will it affect your costs or your productivity? What can you do to reduce the impact on your business? If you can put in place a plan to be ready for these impacts, which might mean you change the way you operate, when the changes finally become evident, and the tide is turning, you will be safe in deeper water whilst most of your competitors spend all their time waiting for someone to bail them out when they hit the exposed rocks. You will have turned a potential negative into a competitive advantage.

The business environment is changing all the time. It could be due to technology, the drought, interest rates or a hundred other things ranging from global to local. While government policy changes are important, they are just one of many changes. A good business manager will be constantly surveying their environment for both the threats and opportunities. Funnily enough, the threats are also often the opportunities.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems.

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The Australian Small Business Blog