STRATEGIC BUSINESS BUILDER AND PROFIT MENTOR!

TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Helping to devise, implement and deliver Strategic Business Plans for more Profitable Businesses and Entrepreneurs with personal high-level Mentoring.

Strategic Plans Build Successful Businesses.

We provide the tools and expertise to build your own, personalized plan, for YOUR business.

Everything is built using plans and tools. Even those tools have been planned and designed.

Building Business success requires the same approach. Success is no accident. Success requires planning and preparation.

I have a new take on the the famous 5 P’s.

Paul’s 5 P’s are:

PROPER PLANNING & PREPARATION PRODUCES PROSPERITY

The simple solution is a Plan. A Strategy. The Business Plan or Strategic Plan.

A plan that takes into account the current status; the desired outcome; and the unforeseen… and then maps out the steps required to deliver the vision…

That’s what Strategy is.

By the time the mainstream media fills their headlines with the current news situation, you will no longer have time to plan. You should be acting on the plan. Your Strategic Plan is a living document that provides the framework, systems and tools that you will use to address challenges that will most certainly arise as you progress towards your goals.

When the plan is prepared, there will be room to make changes as new information comes to light, but only in respect to the actions set out along the way, not changes to the end goal.

Challenging times are very often the times filled with the most opportunity. They may be the times that your competition is actually at its weakest – and these may be the very times that you can take the actions that were planned for (far earlier) in defining your goals.

When business is booming, the average employee has no thoughts of shifting jobs or changing companies unless he is moving to a higher salary. That same average employee is just taking the very same actions as all the other average employees. He may, or may not, be working harder than others – as life is good. It’s easy. If he or she is working “above average” and being recognised for this extra effort, it will hopefully be rewarded with a promotion. On the other hand, if times get really tough, then the above average employee will (also hopefully) be out of the early rounds of redundancy and cost-cutting exercises that the company might be forced to undertake.

That employee will be rewarded for working hard (and following their PLAN A).

Now let’s look at an employee who decides they don’t want “average”. They take the plan one step further and work hard to earn that promotion, but also set in place (PLAN B) to diversify their income. They start a side-business. It does not interfere with the plan to earn that promotion, but it adds a level of security to the remote possibility that they could be made redundant.

That is a PLAN B.

So assuming that employee has a long-term goal to retire wealthy, they will be working to achieve that. Bear in mind that only about 1% of us retire financially independent, and you will see why you are going to have to work harder smarter and a little different to the other 99% in order to achieve that goal. But it is certainly possible of you plan properly and take action towards the steps you set out in that plan.

Let’s relate this to a business.

Plan A is a long term market-share goal in their sector or niche. They set out a Strategic Business Plan that guides the activities, systems and processes to align their efforts with realizing that plan. When a plan is done well, the elements making up the economic environment are also factored into the longer-term goals. So, the fact that the natural business cycle of “booming business” is inevitably followed by the natural cycle of re-setting and shedding of excesses, should be built into the plan. When the tough times arrive, the 5P’s come into play! Reserves stored up from the bumper harvests, can be used to replant that crop if the rainy season is late. It’s all in the plan…

The main problem that a company is going to face is that they may have focussed on their inadequate plan which only addressed a single, short-term goal, say, market-share. This means that the company has, most likely, done all the things that the rest of the market was doing – just to keep up with the Jones’. In today’s climate that would include loading up on debt at low interest rates, maybe using that debt to fund share buy-backs and dividends, or other aimless (non-productive) uses of capital. When the cycle shifts and interest rates rise, so too does the debt burden. This stretches the balance sheets of their peers in that sector, then the company with the REAL STRATEGIC PLAN asks where are the (Strategic) grain reserves from those bumper years?

Plan A: work hard, get the promotion – maybe you win a bigger market share than the rest of the competition…

Plan B: 5P’s … this includes the “unforeseen”: are you positioned to capitalise on the opportunities that will be present in a shifting cycle?

Individual stock market investors rarely trade against the crowd, it’s not in our human nature to avoid “fitting-in”. Indeed, a good deal of success can come from investing in trends – so don’t always be the contrarian. However, the largest losses that individuals face will come from the “unexpected” correction and the tendency to hold on to the losers too long hoping that they will recover. This is called the normalcy bias – assuming that what you have always known to be true will remain so. The greatest investing success comes from well researched information and conviction that what appears to be true “just ain’t so” – Make sure to watch the Oscar winning movie “The Big Short”.

And so it is in business.

Apart from the normal economic cycles, the ebbs and flows of the tide in all natural steady environments, there are certainly a great deal of new ideas and dynamic evolution in the world today. Some of this takes the form of meddling and manipulation from the people that we elect to serve us (the government), while other major disruptors are generated by the accelerating change in how we do things. If we fail to notice and keep abreast of these events we cannot devise the actions that we’ll need to address the challenge and turn that into our opportunity.

Sometimes an entity’s most pressing goal is the return of its capital (rather than the return on its capital). The business that positions itself ahead of time to identify and manage potential risks, and to plan and establish the correct course of action to whether the storm, will prepare for those opportunities and evolve into the market leader in their niche.

This website aims to help you understand and prepare your strategy to be sure PLAN A and PLAN B are ready for action.

Different enterprises will need different plans. Large corporate organisations spend a great deal of time and effort mapping out their long-term strategic plans. This is clearly not appropriate for many smaller and more nimble businesses, but these will still have to think about their overall vision and goals, and tie in the probable challenges and opportunities that might be faced in terms of the broad business cycle as well as the day-to-day time constraints that all SME owners face.

We understand these differences, and we also have the depth of expertise required to make the best suggestions to ensure you have a simple, workable and efficient plan that is YOUR OWN, and YOURS TO OWN.

You will have the Plan to match your Tools and vision for Your set of unique circumstances.

Sign up to read our regular analysis of the current environment, learn more about how to take the actions that will lead to realizing your plan and hear about the disruptors that are set to engage our PLAN B!

Contact Paul here for a free Strategy Session or simply COFFEE WITH A COACH.

(+61) 424 568 874

paul@paul-manning.com.au