Are you comfortable in your business, or do you suffer from fear and uncertainty about where your business is heading and the progress you’re making towards its goals?
“I don’t do numbers!”
“I don’t do numbers!”
“What’s a P&L?”
“If I write it down, and don’t attain it, then I’ve failed.”
“I keep track of my expenses in my check register.”
Personally, I do numbers …. but, I have heard the above comments from an entrepreneur or business owner when discussing the current and/or future finances of their business. This “fear” of numbers can manifest itself in a few different ways.
Why THINK PLAN EXECUTE?
THINK PLAN EXECUTE partners with entrepreneurs and small business owners to implement good management practices that shorten the path to the results they desire.
For an owner to move efficiently from “solo-preneur” to a “business” to a “company”, they need:
- CLARITY about reasonable and feasible short & long-term objectives
- STRUCTURE defining how to reach those objectives
- RESULTS – because without excellent execution against the objectives and plans, all you have is an idea
Pivot!! Make Your Decisions Quickly
Those of you that know me, or have been following my Business Execution blog, know that I am a big proponent of planning – both strategic and tactical. So, how can I now be advising you to make your decisions quickly? Doesn’t that fly-in-the-face of taking the time to think things through and plan?
Let me explain why I don’t think that it does, and why I believe that the speed of your decision making can be an accelerant to the growth of your business. After all, I am as big a proponent of execution as I am of planning.
Can money make you stupid?
Last week I talked about the new JOBS Act making “equity-based crowd funding” legal; and how I believe it is a good thing for startup funding. So this week I thought I would talk about a potential pitfall for the entrepreneur from this “easy money”. I’m ignoring any pitfalls that may be introduced by the act itself – until we see a draft of the regulations I think it is too soon to comment.
While I don’t have any “real data”, based on my own experience I would say that when you talk to people starting a business at least 80% of them come out with some statement along the lines of “if I can raise [insert number here], then all of our problems will be solved”. Unfortunately for many of them, raising the amount of money they are targeting – or even twice as much – won’t help them succeed.