Going off at a slight tangent this post, but at a recent networking event I became interested in the scalability of businesses and in particular how businesses can start from nothing and grow into huge financial concerns.
I was talking to a group of small business owners, one of which was the very proud owner of small retail business that literally started with one pound and had grown it from there into a very sizeable business indeed and is now turning over many thousands of pounds in about 18 months.
Unfortunately, she had some to a sticking point in which she was struggling to get the business to grow further; it all seemed to stem from the fact that she had started the business with no real vision of what she wanted the business to be or do and so she didn’t really have any idea on how she wanted it to grow in the future.
We talked for a while and I realised that as well needing some assistance with asking the difficult strategic questions (who is the customer?, what do they value?, how is she value better than her competitors? etc), she needed something very visual to grab hold of in order to help her move forward.
As she started the business with just £1, I started to look at business milestones from the point of view of how that simple one pound coin, had grown. How quickly did she double that pound? With that £2 how didn’t did she double that to £4 etc, I started to draw it out for her and she liked the concept.
I’ve replicated it below, the simple idea is that from a single £1, doubling your money each step, it’s just 21 steps to you making your first £1m.
She’s pinned this on her office wall and she marking out these 21 milestone steps, dating each step as see goes, she has found visualisation of her business incredibly powerful, she is also undertaking a proper strategic review to ensure that she is making her money doing the very best activities.
I was talking to a group of small business owners, one of which was the very proud owner of small retail business that literally started with one pound and had grown it from there into a very sizeable business indeed and is now turning over many thousands of pounds in about 18 months.
Unfortunately, she had some to a sticking point in which she was struggling to get the business to grow further; it all seemed to stem from the fact that she had started the business with no real vision of what she wanted the business to be or do and so she didn’t really have any idea on how she wanted it to grow in the future.
We talked for a while and I realised that as well needing some assistance with asking the difficult strategic questions (who is the customer?, what do they value?, how is she value better than her competitors? etc), she needed something very visual to grab hold of in order to help her move forward.
As she started the business with just £1, I started to look at business milestones from the point of view of how that simple one pound coin, had grown. How quickly did she double that pound? With that £2 how didn’t did she double that to £4 etc, I started to draw it out for her and she liked the concept.
I’ve replicated it below, the simple idea is that from a single £1, doubling your money each step, it’s just 21 steps to you making your first £1m.
She’s pinned this on her office wall and she marking out these 21 milestone steps, dating each step as see goes, she has found visualisation of her business incredibly powerful, she is also undertaking a proper strategic review to ensure that she is making her money doing the very best activities.
