When Do I Need a Growth Advisor?
If you’re tired of guessing on big decisions, it’s time to reach out for guidance.
Running a business is one of the most unpredictable experiences one can imagine.
One moment you’re boxing up orders, the next you’re approving a digital marketing campaign, and then you’re off to onboard your next team member. When do you have time to build out the cash flow forecast that tells you whether or not you’re on the right track?
If you’re getting tired of guessing when it comes to big growth decisions for your business, we’re here for you.
There are a few tell-tale signs that it may be time for you to reach out for help:
Your bookkeeper and accountant are primarily focused on making past numbers accurate
You don’t have confidence in how the next decision will impact your future cash flow
Your business is growing slower than it maybe could
The primary guidance you’re receiving may be biased (ie, from investor or lender)
Having been the trusted growth advisor for over 50 businesses, I would obviously love the opportunity to connect with you to hear where you’re hoping to grow in the coming months and years.
Regardless of whether or not it makes sense to chat, I would encourage you to seek out someone who you trust and who has experience to help guide you in the right direction.
If you’re interested in connecting, feel free to find a time that works here.
4 Steps to Build Financial Projections that Help You Hit Goals Sooner
At the end of the day, our goal is to help you find the most direct path to that flag in the distance so that you don’t unnecessarily waste time and money along the way.
As a business owner, few things are as important as having a plan. With a clear picture of the next year, you have guidance to confidently navigate whatever comes your way (and sleep peacefully at night). Without one, you're left reacting to the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey with the hope your guesses won’t cause too much damage. .
Maybe a potential investor is asking for a forecast and you want to make sure you tell an accurate story of what’s possible in the future. Maybe you’re tired of guessing about the next season and want a road map that ensures you don’t run out of cash or inventory in the next 12 months. Or, you might be at the point where you know more is possible and are ready to define how profitable an upgraded version 2.0 of your business could be.
There are obvious benefits that come as a result of having a clear plan in place: predictability, confidence, flexibility, control, freedom, and the list goes on. While the detailed steps toward these desired results can be quite complex, the overall steps can be simplified.
Define the flag in the distance (What is the ultimate goal and definition of success?)
Understand “here” (What are the levers, controls, and building blocks that we currently have at our disposal?)
Create a plan to bridge the gap (What is the most direct path to the flag in the distance, and what needs to happen in order to get there?)
Execute / troubleshoot (What needs to be measured along the way to make sure we’re on track?)
At the end of the day, our goal is to help you find the most direct path to that flag in the distance so that you don’t unnecessarily waste time and money along the way (think of us as your growth architect). We recognize most business owners didn’t start their business to create projections and understand cash flow. But that’s exactly what we did.
Our business is helping you grow yours.
If you need a little help building a plan for the future (or just want to say hello), we’d love to chat. Feel free to schedule a time here.
Cash = Lifeblood
Cash is the lifeblood of a business.
We’ve all been there--a cough that just won’t seem to go away or an ache that hasn’t ever healed correctly on its own. As humans, when we’re experiencing some physical symptom we schedule an appointment with a doctor to have our symptoms checked.
As a business owner, where can you turn? If you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you don’t have access to a full C-Suite or board of directors, and you most likely haven’t had enough spare time to go get your MBA.
Phil Knight described cash as the life blood of any business:
“Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living…”
We talk to business owners all the time who are experiencing different business symptoms, and we are passionate about helping identify what’s going on at the root cause.
Only then can the business owner take action and expect a different outcome, toward a more healthy, sustainable future.
When was the last time you took your business for a check up at the doctor?
Start With Why
Understanding the heartbeat of your business is key to finding your direction.
At Amplify, our mission is to help business owners reach their “WHY” sooner.
Before we ever jump into historical financial statements or begin breaking down unit economics, it’s essential for us to get a clear picture of why the business was started in the first place.
Without a strong understanding of the entrepreneur's vision, we wouldn’t have a clear flag in the distance to align all our decisions toward.
Ultimately, we would be left guessing as to what kind of result or outcome would make the business owner happy. Instead we believe beginning with the end in mind is paramount to making decisions that move the business in the right direction.
Examples of "why's" we’ve aligned business decisions toward:
Provide steady income for family before first baby arrives
Earn enough money each month to allow spouse to quit job
Donating a % of profits to non-profit organizations
Employing refugee workers at a generous wage
Create enough bandwidth to earn their pilot’s license
The list could go on and on. When you are clear with your purpose, you have an opportunity to strengthen your bond with all of the stakeholders in the business.
If you’re a business owner, we would encourage you to get as clear as possible on one big question: Why did you start your business? (If you’re not a business owner, is the purpose behind the business you’re working for clear?)
Don’t just take it from us--we love hearing Simon Sinek unpack the importance of starting with WHY:
Elephant + Rider + Path
If we’re not clear on how we define success, someone else will surely do it for us.
It’s hard for people who don’t run their own business to truly understand or appreciate all the hard work that is required to move forward toward big picture goals. You find yourself working late nights, trying new things with no guarantee of success (repeatedly falling and getting back up again), weathering seasonal revenue swings, all while trying to stay focused on important things outside of work (like family and community). It can feel overwhelming.
It’s tempting as a business owner to fall into a bad habit: growth for growth’s sake. We see stories of unicorn businesses scaling to the moon in almost no time at all, and assume that we should attempt to do the same. The reality, however, is that no one definition of success applies to each business or entrepreneur.
If we’re not clear on how we define success, someone else will surely do it for us.
One mistake we see is that the daily and weekly decisions a business owner makes aren’t always made in light of their long-term goals--there’s often not a clear connection WHY one decision is made instead of another. The ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey can quickly throw us off balance, inviting us to become more reactionary and less proactive.
Dan and Chip Heath use a powerful metaphor to explain the various forces at play as we move toward our long-term goals:
Our goal with every company we serve is to constantly align daily decisions with what matters most in the long run--we want to help every entrepreneur hit their WHY sooner.
From Kickstarter to Consistent Cash Flow: The Roadmap to a Sustainable Business
Not long after the confetti falls, the reality sets in that there’s a job to be done.
A successful product launch is one of the great highs that an entrepreneur experiences, and few moments are as validating that you are taking your business in the right direction. Not long after the confetti falls, the reality sets in that there’s a job to be done.
For a new business, this is a significant fork in the road:
Should you periodically use kickstarter for each new product release?
OR
Should you create a self sustaining business?
What are the ingredients of a sustainable business?
1. You have the first key ingredient: customers.
2. A clear end goal and a plan for the future.
3. An ecosystem of experts. Entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who can begin to help carry the load.
These are not small tasks, but it’s the only way for you as the business owner and visionary to get your head above water. Your new job is to make sure everything is moving in the right direction.
What numbers do I need to know to be sure I stay on track?
There are a million different numbers you could try to keep an eye on within your business. In order to cut through the noise, we’ve found there are a few key metrics to pay close attention to, especially in the early days of a business (before calculating working capital, financing needs, etc.):
Burn rate (fixed monthly expenses to run the business)
Fume date (total free cash in bank divided by burn rate)
Number of units or orders to break even each month
Capacities / bottlenecks (the constraints capping your growth)
Once you understand these numbers, you can make operational decisions (order more units, hire the next person, buy the next machine, etc.) and know exactly when you can afford to make the investment--essentially, a roadmap for growth. How’s that for peace of mind?
We recently used these exact concepts to help Plot Devices (a company that launched on Kickstarter) build out a growth plan. Anne Fogerty, one of the founders spoke of the impact of these concepts on their business:
"Working with Amplify pushed me to articulate exactly what I want to accomplish with Plot Devices and drill down into what it's going to take to make that happen. They made sense of the chaotic inner-workings of my business and built the tools I needed to move forward. Now I can easily keep a good pulse on how things are going operationally and make informed decisions to ultimately grow the business."
If you’re looking to take the next step toward building a sustainable business, we’d love to talk. Feel free to schedule a call here.
How to Get to 2.0
Once a plan is constructed that connects the “here” to “there,” there is more clarity, confidence and control.
For a lot of small businesses, warmer weather means the opportunity to get in front of new customers. On street corners and fair grounds all across the country, entrepreneurs are setting up to showcase their products in hopes of a nice sales boost and maybe some new evangelizing customers.
What a lot of the new customers don’t see, however, is just how much hard work the business owner put into showing up for the event. You develop the products, you source the materials, you oversee production and make sure the feel of your display and website are both on brand--all to get the product to the point where it can be enjoyed by the customer.
This is a spot where a lot of entrepreneurs can get stuck if they’re not careful. The business grows, but is capped at the point where the owner is still involved in every aspect. This plateau often falls short of the big goals and dreams that drove the founder to begin in the first place. A significant shift is required to break through to the next level.
What will it take for your business to get to version 2.0?
Analyze your margins and sales channels to understand profitability
Calculate your production capacity to know when the system will break
Identify delegate-able responsibilities
Define the roles you need to hire for to free up time
Project when you can cash flow big next steps in the business
Build rhythms of tracking key metrics to measure your progress
One big reason people get stuck is because they don’t know their numbers well enough to build a clear and actionable growth plan to effectively move their business forward.
Once a plan is constructed that connects the “here” to “there,” there is more clarity, confidence and control.
We’re seeing companies (probably a lot like yours) double their cash flow within 12 months once a plan like this gets put into action.
A lot of business owners have a clear vision of where they’re hoping to go, but they don’t know exactly how to navigate the chaos. We bring order out of that chaos by building custom growth plans to help you hit your big picture goals—we’re like a GPS for your business. Where are you hoping to be 12 months from now?
Our clients are often facing big picture questions like:
How do I build a sustainable business with predictable cash flow?
How do I stop being so dependent on craft fairs?
What is the best place to invest my money in growth (ad spend, inventory, new hires, etc.)?
If those seem familiar, schedule a time here to let us know where you’re at in your journey.
Is it Really the Most Wonderful Time of the Year? Presence in the Chaos
Every entrepreneur must answer this question: What does balancing my business and life commitments look like for me personally?
Movies, TV shows, social media and music have perfected the art of setting high expectations for the holiday season. The big romantic gesture, the perfect family feast, snowball fights with the kids. What is so illustrious about the pictures they paint? They promise an opportunity to be fully present in situations outside of our daily routine. An opportunity to hit pause on all the noise around us and turn to the things that make us feel fulfilled.
For a lot of business owners, hitting that pause button doesn't seem like an option. The holidays can be one of the more stressful times of the year. Months of preparation has led to what is hoped (and frankly is needed) to be the best quarter of the year--an opportunity to put some significant cash in the bank heading into the new year.
Adding to the stress, this reality is often not fully understood by close friends and relatives, which can lead to questions like:
Will you be able to take the whole week of Thanksgiving off?
Do you really need to be checking your email?
When can you unplug and just relax?
Every entrepreneur must answer this question:
What does balancing my business and life commitments look like for me personally?
While the internal tension between two important things competing for our attention will most likely never go away, it’s essential to at least put some thought into how decisions play out in the real world.
Start with the end in mind by defining what success at the end of Q4 looks like
Set time boundaries that allow for the key activities (both business and personal) to happen when and how you want and commit to not violating them
Invite others in by sharing your plan with someone close to you who can help support
Stay disciplined and stick to your schedule so that you can be present in the chaos
Our hope is that you become proactive, rather than reactive. Not having a clear game plan heading into the coming weeks is the difference between being tossed by the waves or surfing. And don’t beat yourself up if you fall in the water a few times along the way--what matters is we try and learn along the journey.
What’s your strategy heading into the next few weeks?