Image Source: Lendi
Roughly 8 out of 10 businesses are wiped out within the first couple of years. It’s even worse when you look at who is still around after 10 years. Only around 4 percent of businesses don’t disappear into oblivion, which brings up something interesting because they can’t all have had it easy.
A huge percentage of those still around after a decade must have worked hard to turn their company around at some point. They probably thought they had failed more than a few times. It means you will be able to turn your business around too, so let’s look at some ways you’ll be able to do it.
Focus On Your Best Employees
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It states 80 percent of the results will come from 20 percent of the work. The same kind of thing could be said about your employees. They’re the most important chance you’ve got of turning things around and you’ll need to focus on them, but don’t follow what most businesses do. For quick results forget about your worst employees. Spend your time improving the small percentage of employees who will bring you most of the results.
Keep Your Eyes Glued To The Books
As soon as you realise you’re going through a tough time you have to start glueing your eyes to the books. It’s very unlikely they’ll be wrong unless someone has messed up big time, but you won’t necessarily be looking for any mistakes. You want to keep an eye on the books because it will allow you to see opportunities where you can cut costs. Hopefully doing this can help you become profitable, but if it doesn’t you’ll still be able to extend your runway before it’s time to turn off the lights.
Start Listening To Other People
When you’re running a business it’s easy to think you’ll be able to turn everything around on your own. Would you feel embarrassed if someone else in your company came up with a solution you haven’t even considered? All great leaders will hire people smarter than them, and they’re not afraid to ask for help. Speak to everyone in your company and ask for their opinions on how you can improve things. Maybe it will be the janitor who saves the day.
Drop Things That Aren’t Working
This problem could crop up in a number of different ways depending on the business you run, but let’s just assume you deal with business clients. If any of them are wasting your time and causing you grief, you’ll need to let them go. You want to keep hold of your best clients because it’s where you’ll make the money. If you’re scared about dropping them straight away because you’ll initially lose money don’t do anything drastic, but as soon as you’ve found new clients cut your worst ones loose.
Reorganise The Structure Of The Business
Sometimes it’s not just about spending less money or selling more product each month. You might have to take a helicopter view of the business. Is it set up optimally at the moment, or can you make changes to improve things without compromising the end product? Can you merge or eliminate certain departments? Will you need to let employees go? Your business might need to go through some major restructuring to grow your business and become profitable.
Streamlining Your Business
This isn’t just as simple as dropping a client or an underperforming product. You’ll really need to sit back and ask yourself what the business actually does. In a lot of cases, businesses try to focus on lots of things because they think it will make them more money. They don’t understand it would be more profitable to focus on only one thing. If you put one hundred percent of your effort into your core offering, your profits would suddenly shoot up. You need to re-evaluate your entire business model now.
It’s Never Too Late To Succeed
If there are other people in the same industry succeeding you have proof of concept. The only reason you’re not doing well is because of something you are doing wrong. It means there is still a good chance you’ll be able to turn things around, but you’ll have to act fast instead of waiting while you slowly sink. Look carefully at everything we’ve spoken about today and try to figure out which tips will be more likely to work for you.
