Berkmans Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember reading about the founder of IBM, Tom Watson stating that the way he grew IBM into such a huge company was that he had a clear vision of what IBM would ‘look like’ when it was built.  Every day he went to work his goal was to move the business that bit closer to his vision.                     

Walt Disney could visualise Disneyland before it was built.

Ray Krok could visualise McDonalds in every part of the world before he started selling franchises.

At Berkmans we have learnt that there are 5 key areas that business owners and managers would be wise to focus on. 

They are as follows:  

1. Growth.The aim is to meet your financial goals as your needs grow and to add value to the business.
2. Profitability. To ensure your business is producing returns.
3. Cash Flow. Growth can adversely affect cash flow.  It must be monitored and managed.
4. Asset Protection. To protect the efforts of your career and look after family assets.
5. Succession. A plan for winding down and maintaining lifestyle.

A good question is simply:  What are the most important things for me to be working on right now?

The things you work on could fall into the following categories:

The development of the business including:   

a) Doing things right   

b) Doing things better       

c) Doing away with things that are wasteful     

c) Do things other people in our industry are doing       

d) Do things that haven’t been done       

e) Do things that can’t be done.

In other words explore things that currently don’t seem possible to do in your industry and look for a way.

Measuring the right things.

An old saying is “what you can measure you can manage”.

As you would realise the issues referred to above represent core issues of any business.

In future articles in Berkmans Newsletter we will no doubt expand on these areas in some detail.

In the meantime, should there be anything you would like to discuss in relation to the above please contact us by email or phone.