Nine Business Drivers – To Become #1 In Your Chosen Markets…
I am continually asked what I do as a “Business Coach”. And the answer has evolved over the past 23 years. When I began as a coach, there was a movement in the industry to be a non-playing coach. This inferred that you guided your clients to become sufficiently knowledgeable (and wise) to make the best strategic choices for them, their business and their lives.
That was flawed.
More appropriate is to use that approach to guide your client to make good decisions on what they actually want from and in their businesses. And then to guide, cajole, bully, manipulate, and otherwise direct them to and along the most effective strategic pathways to achieve monster success in their businesses.
At least that is my approach. Some in the industry call me a consultant. Others have no clue. In fact, most in the business coaching arena have little clue about strategic growth. It is fortunate that “coaching” as a process works well – and the power from having ANY direction to constantly move towards is potent. There is some fantastic physics and maths involved. The short version is that it is only by having target (or at least a direction) to direct your energy towards that you can avert the pain and waste of firing in all directions and achieving little (without luck).
So – if you want to get somewhere faster – a competent coach will help this.
That is not my niche.
The joy that I get, and the additional value that I deliver, comes from the condensation of the unlimited choices of strategy available to an individual business into an ongoing plan that most effectively drives growth and success. Success being a better and better life for the owners.
Here is a short list of some of the business drivers that are available. You can figure out how to use each of these yourself. Not in order of priority or value:
- Marketing – want different results change your marketing. It is driven by maths + innovation + communication
- Strategy
- Capital – financial, human, intellectual, systems
- Business Model – different to Strategy
- Relationships you have
- Distribution Channels – all the different tools you can use to impact the market.
- Products/Services/Packages – driven by lifetime value strategies
- Systems, Procedures and Processes
- How you think about things
- Others, but these are a good starting point for most.
One of the most interesting questions is “Where to begin with your business?”
My simple rule is to optimise the best parts of what you are already doing. This helps massively with the overwhelm factor that haunts business owners. It also results in increased profits (usually very quickly), and that allows business owners to relax and think more clearly. And then it is easier to uncover and reorganize in ways that transform businesses.
It also allows time to consider the attractiveness of the business and the market zone it is positioned in. There are high level strategies that can guide decisions about keeping and growing versus selling fully or partially.
This also guides exit strategy development, because at some point everyone leaves the business.
Are there transient increases and decreases in chaos when businesses grow – absolutely. And you will want to learn to ride them rather than fight them. Chaos is the driver of growth in open systems – your job is to use that chaos – but corral it, harness it for your benefit. Uncertainty is different to fear, and you will notice that you adapt to uncertainty just as you adapt the challenge in the gym by growing stronger.
Uncertainty is not a horrible experience, when you start small and safely – and that is what you will do – because anything else has an element of idiocy. Avoid tactics with huge risk – there is no need to use them in business.
My job is to help you harvest the low-risk, low-hanging fruit while we plan and construct an orchard that can dominate your chosen market for a very long time.
