Business Partner blueprint

  This blog is covering number four of the Ten Core Business Practices. There are three in one here: Financial Analysis is one, Reporting is two and Capital Management is number three. I’ll start this with a story. The first time I went into an executive position, it was for a dot.com and I had been promoted from a sales position. I was an officer in the company. If you don't know exactly what an officer of the company means, it's pretty much what you're doing as a small business owner. It means that you primarily have responsibility for a huge portion of the business; that you are the one that's being held accountable. And if you own the company, then you, by definition, are an officer of or principal as evidenced by your name on all of the legal documents according to your articles of incorporation. My boss at the time had a lot of confidence in me. But one of the things that he was always a stickler about was “did I know my numbers”? And you know, being a person that...

  This is Part 3 of my 10-part series on the 10 core business processes. I’m going to cover number three which is quality, process improvement and change management. If you recall, number one was customer strategy and relationships or otherwise known as marketing. Number two was employee development and satisfaction, and now we're getting to number three: quality; process improvement; and change management. You may be asking what do I mean by quality, process improvement, and change management and how does it apply to my business? Well, first and foremost, quality in the context of corporate supply chain work is the ability of a product or service to meet demand or spec above and beyond average. Can it be consistently delivered above and beyond average? If an average failure rate for a specific item is five out of every 100, and your product fails only one in 100, you would have a quality product. And typically, when you start talking about quality, you look at how well designed ...

  This is the second part in my series on the 10-core business processes every business must have. In order to move from a lifestyle business to a legacy business, you need to be competent in all 10 core business processes. These are must-do things. You don't have to have them to make money, but if you're building a legacy business, these are the 10 that you really and truly need to focus on. They will position your business where you have the most in common with the 500 largest companies in the world. If you get these 10 processes right, it's going to be obvious to anybody with whom you speak that you're ready to do business, that you're ready to play, you're ready to get in and win the game. Today I’m going to focus on process number two -- which is employee development and satisfaction.     You might be sitting there thinking, “What? Look, I just don't have the revenue coming in right now. You know, I just don't have a large enough team. I don't...

  Due to the comments and interest generated by the previous blog “Do You Have a Primadonna Business?”, I'm starting a new series discussing the 10 core business processes that you need to have in place -- and walking through them individually. First, why are the 10 core business processes important? They're important because they speak volumes about the sophistication and maturity that you've implemented in your business: not necessarily maturity in terms of the number of years, but maturity with regard to your fundamental understanding of what it takes to have sustained performance, sustained growth, and sustained ability to deliver a consistent product and service. The issue that you run into without these 10 core business processes is that you are clearly operating at a high degree of risk for your business, which means that for any corporation looking to do business with you, you are also transferring that risk to them. And the first thing you have to understand abou...

My topic for this blog is “The Signs That You Have a Prima Donna Business”. Now you might be thinking, “what do you mean -- a prima donna business? I'm not running a prima donna business. As a matter of fact, that word is offensive to me”.  Well, I want you to think about this for a second. How many of you got into business with a strong subject matter expertise. I mean you were in accounting --  you knew accounting like there's no tomorrow; you were in healthcare -- you knew healthcare, dentistry, doctors, massage therapists; you were highly trained in what you do. You went to school, you learned a vocation, you learned a trade, you learned a business function and you are really and truly a master of all of that. And you can do that like there's no tomorrow. How many of you started your businesses with nothing but just confidence that you could go out and make it successful? You put a business plan together. You went out there, you started talking to customers and you had ...

  Congratulations! You have made it to the last installment of my nine-part series on the Pathway to Your Success. This series has talked about a number of different things. It's been about helping you to discover the small business growth opportunity with the biggest companies in the world. I have discussed corporate contracts versus government contracts; how to use corporate contracts for legacy business growth; what large companies buy; why the time is now for small business owners to get into this game; and financing your business so that you can really play to win. I have also covered the mindset for success. Today's topic and the final part of this series is “ The Corporate Opportunity: How to Get Into The Game ”. I was talking to someone with whom I'm working closely and we were thinking back about our childhood. Do you remember when you were a teenager how you just knew everything -- you were on top of the world? Sometimes it was difficult listening to your pare...