Look Before You Leap

1

• Look Before You Leap
• Preparing Your Enterprise for Growth
• Business Skills, Motivation Staying Focused
• Presenter
• Neil Willmett

2
Session Overview

• Who we are
• Business skills and motivation that underpin the
  establishment of a successful enterprises
• Staying focused

3
Who We Are

• The Willmett Group is a group of four individual
  businesses that operate in the employment,
  recruitment, media industries.
• Based in Brisbane we specialise in providing
  business and employment advice to for profit and
  not for profit organisations.
• In the last 5 years we have helped establish over
  100 businesses in Australia.

4
Business Failure

• Common reasons for business failure include
• Lack of financial planning and review
• Over-dependence on specific individuals in the
  business
• Owners concentrating on the technical, rather
  than the strategic work
• Inadequate capital
• Lack of management systems
• Lack of vision, purpose, or principles
• Poor market segmentation and/or strategy
• Failure to establish and/or communicate company
  goals
• Competition or lack of market knowledge
• Absence of standard quality program

5
Business Skills Business Failure

• Regardless of if your organisation is a not for
  profit or for profit, you need basic business
  skills to help you overcome business failure

6
Business Skills

• These include the following skills
• Financial management (taxation, cashflow etc)
• People management (hiring and managing staff)
• Strategic planning
• Accessing capital
• Management systems (record keeping etc)
• Marketing
• Quality management
• Governance
• Management of business life and self

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Business Skills

• Why?
• Some businesses fail because the owner lacked
  business skills
• Where to get them
• Can be gained through short specific courses
  (i.e. Marketing 101), directly from business
  owners, reading and through business courses

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Case Study XYZ Lawn Mowing

• Lawn Mowing a social enterprise that was
  established in 2005 with 4 people
• Independent feasibility study concluded that
  business was profitable if run appropriately
• Objective to employ long term unemployed
• Turnover in Year 1 - 390,000
• Failure in Year 2 resulting in loss of jobs
• Why? Business was missing adequate management,
  ongoing risk assessment, ability to understand
  financial data and market changes
• Solution ongoing training, better management
  systems and risk management

9
Growing Pains

• The transition from micro to medium business
  requires social ventures to understand the risks
  of faster growth
• cash-flow management and properly managed credit
  systems are essential to fail-proof a business
  during the growth phase
• Planning and accessing expert help for crucial
  areas such as marketing and financial management
  are vital to avoid failure

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Motivation Business
11
Motivation Business

• The fact is that we are there are always going to
  be challenges establishing a social enterprise
• Accepting and acknowledging this is the best start

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Addressing Lack of Motivation

• We all have to separate the small unpleasant
  things from the bigger picture
• TALK TO YOURSELF!!!
• Ask yourself - Why did I want to establish this
  enterprise?

13
Motivation Business

• Have a serious conversation with yourself
• Your subconscious is a powerful place
• Remember, it can win you Olympic Gold medals or
  it can leave you shaking with uncontrollable
  fear, unable to walk across a high bridge
• Talk to your subconscious
• It will learn to do what you tell it to
• This will depend on the thoughts you feed it
• Feed your mind only positive thoughts

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Stay Focused

• Last thing, but very important
• Too many people lose sight of the big picture
• They concentrate on the technical, rather than
  the strategic work
• Surround yourself with experience and expertise
• Importantly always reassess your goals and ask
  for help

15
Contact

• neil_at_willmettconsultants.com
• Go out and do well, but more importantly
• go out and do some good