10 Tips to Starting and Growing a Successful Business
by Fred Roed on 28/10/06 at 3:12 pm
1 comment
This is from a UK business blog called BOB (Business Opportunities Blog). From experience, I know numbers 9 and 10 work pretty well…
1. Share with shareholders
Keep your investors well informed of your progress
Good news can wait tell bad news quickly
Don’t spend any time thinking about exit
2. Focus
Stick to your knitting
Only diversify if it is driven by customer need
No product development for its own sake
3. Love your staff
Tell them everything good and bad
No politics
Celebrate success no matter how small
Communicate, communicate, communicate!
4. Cash is king
Make one person responsible for invoicing and cash collection
Treat account payable departments as a customer
Chase cash hard
5. Baby steps
Don’t build processes too soon
Only put in place process as needed and when driven by growth
Don’t try to act like a big company it will stifle innovation
6. Manage with a light touch
Give people room to experiment
Everyone is a hero
Be informal
7. Only count what matters
Clearly define success
Put in place simple ways of measuring success
Give staff big rewards for achieving success
8. Love your customers
Never over promise
Price to win
Be flexible in everything
Don’t throw your weight around when you have none
9. Don’t spend money
No cars, fancy offices, fancy PCs or expensive lunches
Have a culture where no one likes to spend money
Make cash everyone’s preoccupation
10. Use other peoples brains
Park your ego
Employ the best
Use non execs
Network
Click here to view the original post
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Karin
Oct 28th, 2006
Nice list, but I don’t really agree with item 5 (its also in contradiction with item 7 IMO).
Implemented processes makes you consistent, every time, every day, to every customer, to every employee etc.
It’s not needed to have rigid processes that stifle innovation, but processes – systems – are important (from the very beginning of starting your business) to grow.
Item 4 and 10 are very, very important. Addition to ‘employ the best’: find the best specialist and turn him/her into a mentor.