While much uncertainty still remains after the craziness of 2020, our Chairman Colin Mills talks about his process on how to significantly grow your business.
“The best advice I ever received for ‘doubling’ the size of our business, was to list down the Top 20 things we could do to increase the revenue by 10 times. You can then identify the Top 3 activities to concentrate on for the following year” says Colin.
So let’s say you’re a $4million business. Spend a few hours listing out the 20 things you could do to turn this into a $40million business over the next 12 months. This will force you to think outside the box and away from small incremental changes you can make.
I suggest you then spend another hour or so considering the Top 3 activities. These will be the activities that are most likely to get you towards your goal of $40m.
You then have the top 3 activities to focus on over the next 12 months that may well enable you to double your turnover.
For each of those top 3 activities, develop clear action plans on how you are going to achieve results.
Next, get input from your management team (including your CFO of course) in developing these action plans.
Don’t forget to consider the risk and downsides to each of your priorities. Then develop strategies to mitigate the risks you identify.
Above all, ensure your plans are realistic and find capacity that can support your ideas. Your CFO should be able to support you in developing finance and funding to ensure your growth plan is realistic.
The overall economic climate won’t allow all business to double their size this year. However, this radical approach for business growth will hopefully enable some to change their thinking from doom & gloom towards optimism and growth. As Henry Ford famously said “If you think you can, or think you can’t, either way you’ll be right!”
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