How Strong Is Your Business?

If I sat across from you now and asked you this question, what would you say?

What if I was the best potential customer you encountered so far? What if winning my business could propel your business to the next level or give you the huge break you’ve been waiting for?

What if I was the investor you needed to seriously grow your business or the bank manager you needed a loan from?

Could you convince me that your business was strong enough to meet my needs as a customer or give me the return I was seeking as an investor?

So what would you say? What would convince me? What do I need to hear and see? More to the point do you know how strong your business is or how vital it is that you should know?

Now, if you’ve read my report How Strong Is Your Business you’ll know how to answer this question and also why it’s so important that you do.

Having read the report you may have looked at your business from a completely different angle and discovered that it isn’t as strong as you assumed or as strong as it needs to be. Sobering though this discovery might be, at least you now know and also you know what makes for a strong business.

Let’s say you haven’t read the report. Maybe you don’t need to in order to answer the question. Ok, so what, as a potential customer or investor am I actually asking when I say ‘How strong is your business?’ Stop reading and take a minute to formulate your answer.

Can you confidently answer the question? Do you know what I want to hear to be convinced?

“How strong is my business? Well, revenue and profit are growing, as is our market share. Our customers like our products and services and say nice things about us. We convert a healthy percentage of prospects we attract.”

If you answered in this way then I would say that yes, right now you appear to have a healthy, growing business. But that isn’t enough – there are plenty of seemingly healthy businesses that are no longer with us.

I need to know that you will continue to have a healthy growing business for years to come. More importantly, you need to know.

To make me (and you) confident that your business is strong, I would need to know that you had:

Identified what could go wrong – because things will – and that you were prepared enough so that your business would be affected little;
Identified where you wanted your business to be and exactly how you were going to get there so that you were focused and your business (and any people in it) was aligned, coherent and driving towards this destination;
Systemised your business so that it ran efficiently and effectively without you in it;
Control of your business and was keeping it on course.

These 4 points are indicative of strength and are fundamentally required if a business is to be truly strong and successful in the long run. I call them Levels of Strength and define them as follows:

Strength against Harm – you are prepared for the hazards that lie ahead and know how to avoid or eliminate them
Strength of Purpose – you have defined where you want your business to be and know how to get there
Strength in Motion – your business can run effectively and efficiently without your intervention
Strength in Control – you can keep your business on course and get it to where you want it to be

I wrote the, How Strong Is Your Business report to highlight these 4 levels and how I reached the conclusion that they are vital if a business is to be successful in the long run. In my research and writing, I also reached the conclusion that

If you’re not sure how strong your business is then it’s almost certainly not strong enough.

I only say that because…well, because it’s logical. Statistically, most businesses struggle and fail. They weren’t strong enough to get over whatever it was that hurt them enough to result in their closure. Therefore, most businesses aren’t strong enough to achieve long-term success.

Making your business strong therefore has to be a purposeful exercise. It won’t happen by accident and your business won’t naturally be strong simply because its currently doing well.

Whether you read the report and follow the argument or not. If you don’t know for sure that your business is…

Strong enough to handle what could harm it;
Strong enough to know where it’s going and how to get there;
Strong enough to work without you (regardless of the size of your business) and
Strong enough to stay on course…

Then it can’t be strong enough because you haven’t made it so.

So, you need to identify your strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. You need to step back and give your business a long, hard look to see what could harm it or slow its progress. That sounds daunting so I’ve put together something that will help.

The purpose of ‘Your Business Foundation’ when I launched it was to help more business owners – many more – on top of those I help through consulting, coaching and workshops.

Well, I’ve been helping business owners strengthen their business for a number of years now and I always start with, what I call a health-check tool that I created and have refined. The Business Foundation Health Check Tool gives you a clear and thorough assessment of how strong your business is.

Once my client completes this tool, we can see clearly where the business is strong, weak and potentially vulnerable. And from that we can formulate a plan that will strengthen the business and build it on a strong foundation.

So, following the ‘purpose’ of the ‘Your Business Foundation’ brand, I’ve decided to make this health check tool available for you to use without me.

In addition to the tool you get a whole video course on hpw to make your business stronger and 2 videos showing you how to use the tool and how to analyse the results to get the best out of it.

The course and tool will really help you to assess where you need to focus your time and energy to making sure your business is strong enough to grow to the next level – assuming that’s what you want.

However you decide to strengthen your business, make it a priority because not only will your business be more prepared for the unexpected, it will work more effectively and efficiently and will help you control and steer it better.

This in turn will allow you to step back and build a better business with certainty and control.

How Strong Is Your Business?

How Strong Is Your Business?

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