The European Union has a myriad of rules and regulations. One of the most “interesting” (substitute your term for interesting after reading the rule) is a requirement bananas sold in stores be free from “abnormal curvature.”
The point of this memo is not to discuss the EU’s bureaucracy, it’s to discuss streamlining the path to growth, which the EU is struggling with right now (so maybe there’s a connection).
- When I coach business owners it’s all about growing revenues, making more profit, and doing so while working less.
- Helping business owners work through the strategies in my book If They Can Sell Pet Rocks Why Can’t You Sell Your Business (For What You Want)? always gets us focused on growth. It’s because one of my top three tenets regarding preparing a business for sale is to show growth.
- My work mentoring consultants always focuses on generating clients, i.e. making a sale to create revenue.
A streamlined path is always easier to traverse than one filled with obstacles, especially self-imposed obstacles. So ask yourself, whether you have 100 or more employees or are on your own, are you making it as easy as possible to generate more revenue? Or are you getting in your own way like the:
- CPA firm wanting to sell but undercharging their clients, making it difficult for an acquirer to keep those clients (when they charge market rates).
- Financial advisory firm charging twice the going rate, which scared off buyers for his firm as they (ethically) wouldn’t charge that much.
- The business owner who was his main bottleneck because he refused to train anybody to do certain tasks. “I can do it in 20 minutes, it will take over an hour to teach somebody, so I’ll just do it.” Every day he did this, for years.
We get enough rules, guidelines, and regulations from government, large customers, etc. There’s no need to make your own.
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
