Finding Profitable Niches
There was a great article in the WSJ yesterday about The World’s Oddest Air Routes. For example: Armenian airline Armavia (catchy name) now flies Birmingham, UK to Amritsar, India via Armenia Delta flies Paris to Cincinnati Boston has non stop flights to Cape...Are You Looking For New Products or New Customers?
In the last few weeks I was reminded of this dilemma by Seth Godin in his start up podcast and in Derek Siver’s great book – Anything You Want. As the owner of an SMB are you and your team trying to find new customers or should you be focused on finding...
The Productivity of Simplicity
We’ve all read some sort of personal productivity system during our business lives. The problem is finding one that really works for you. The secret is definitely to minimize the number of touches. Here is a little system that is working well for me. Basically 3...Scaling A Business – A Chat with Joe Alsop
Joe Alsop founded Progress Software in 1981. The first year of sales was 1984 at a few hundred thousand dollars. This is the graph of profitable sales that followed that first year, covering 25 years until he resigned in 2009 when sales were $515m and the market...
As an SMB Owner – How Do You Measure Your Week?
As the owner of a private company how do you measure a good week? What are your jugular metrics when measured at 5pm on a Friday night that give you the essential picture? I know there are literally 100 Key Performance Indicators you can measure but if I gave you the...
The Odds Game
In the US the odds of selling a business for $10m or more in 2011 were 1 in 4627 or 0.022%. (5900 out of 27.3m US businesses) In the UK the odds of would be pop stars being signed by a record label in 2011 were 1 in 3428 or 0.029%. (175 out of 600,000) The odds of...
Questions that Scaling needs to solve
Questions Have you positioned your business in the best medium term market? Are you remarkable or invisible in the market? Are you clear on your Product Road Map? Is your business outgrowing your staff? Are you waiting too long to hire new people? Have you formalized...The Pyramid Principle – Tough Love
Most entrepreneurs run their business like an upside down pyramid: As they get bored with one activity they diversify into another activity before they have scratched the surface on the first activity. Their idea of strategy is represented by a long flat line of...
5 Ideas to Help Scale at 25.9% Growth
You are a key shareholder in a private company with sales in the $2m to $30m range. What % do you need to grow Sales to build a business that is 10 times bigger in 10 years – 25.9%. That’s the math. That’s 10x thinking. Or if you are in a hurry to do it in 5...Operational Excellence For Exits
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