Entrepreneurship – Checklist of Myths
It’s all about profitability. It’s not. It’s about positive cash flow. You go bust through lack of cash, not profit. Websites are the responsibility of marketing people. Wrong. Today the website is the responsibility of the CEO. Most websites are a disjointed,...
M&A Negotiation Checklist
Whether you’re buying or selling it always helps to have a little checklist by your side for those big meetings. Here is my top 20 tips: Checklist Always clarify the up to date position. e.g. when buying a company, talking to the owner – perhaps you could update...
Checklist To Build The Perfect Budget!
It’s budget time. For many management teams the months of November and December represents the Budget sign off time. However they are so often badly done. Frankly they are recklessly compiled representing the classic “hope over experience” document instead of an...
Acquisitions – A Checklist of Checklists to Support Success
In 2009 Atul Gawande authored a great little book, The Checklist Manifesto. I ingested it. Well, I’m fanatical about checklists! As the publicity around the book stated: Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors...
Launching a New Website – Checklist
At some point in a company’s life it’s time to relaunch the website! The catalyst is often the need to reposition the brand to tell a stronger more relevant story, but it could be a move to quantum leap exposure in the marketplace 12 months ahead of an IPO...
Cracking the Silos Using Fractional COOs
As you scale your private company to its next level of sales and profits there comes a point when, systems, protocols, know-how and expertise from your existing team just won’t cut it. The evolution of a private company will always come down to these 5 basic...
Scaling from $10m to $100m – Thoughts from an Operator
How do you measure the evolution of a smaller company evolving to a larger business? Is it headcount, profits, market share? For the purposes of this post I’d like to consider a company that would like to scale sales from $10m to $100m, let’s say over the next 10...
How Do Employers Motivate Workers?
There was a great little article tucked away in the WSJ a few weeks ago. It’s worth summarizing the gist of it and unpacking for a few learning thoughts. Mozilla (maker of Firefox web browser) had a problem – how to fix bugs in its bug-fixing process....
New Video Series – The Saleability Test
We’ve produced a series of videos in small bite sized chunks to allow you to digest some or all of the ideas surrounding the Saleability Test. The essence of the test is to determine the company’s exposure to dependency. Buyers/investors don’t like dependency....Operational Excellence For Exits
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