The following is an excerpt from the Testimonial received from ErgonomicsDirect (Pty) Ltd: “… The dedication and commitment demonstrated by OptiGrowth consultants have consistently exceeded our expectations. Their approachable yet informative manner has steered our company towards greater autonomy and efficiency. Their professionalism, efficiency, and transparent communication have been instrumental in our journey towards becoming a more streamlined and scalable enterprise…”

See the details of the full Testimonial here: ErgonomicsDirect Acknowledgement of OptiGrowth

Ergonomicsdirect offers a comprehensive range of specialist ergonomic equipment for office and home working environments and is constantly seeking creative ways to change the way that people look at office ergonomics. It sources its ergonomic products from several recognised and leading global suppliers. When it comes to their products, they:

1. Strive to offer an extensive range of products and brands to offer solutions that fit both your workspace requirements as well as your budget.
2. Only stock products that have passed critical analysis by their experts and met their strict product quality standards.
3. Also, offer Ergonomic Office Workstation Assessments as well as talk and information sessions on Ergonomics.

Discover more about this great company here:  https://ergonomicsdirect.co.za

At this point, we need to note: the use of any movements, trends or awareness campaigns mentioned here are in no way an indication of OptiGrowth’s like or dislike for them. Fundamentally we believe in the free market economies, freedom of choice and freedom of speech with the ability to vigorously debate all aspects around any viewpoints.

Use the examples of the current state of the South African Economy, Political Policy affecting business, Black Lives Matter, LGBQT+, COVID vaccinations and the woke movements happening now and in the last 3 years. There was a growing perception that you were either with it or against it. If you said nothing, you were naturally against it and this put pressure on businesses, who very often had very little knowledge or opinion on these matters, to make statements or campaigns promoting these movements/trends with some devasting effects.

What do you do?

Making these decisions will always be difficult and choosing to share a business opinion or view could have a huge impact on a business, both positive and negative. There is a very real consequence to any reaction you may choose to take, the biggest consequence currently is that of “cancellation” or “cancel culture”.

The simple answer is return to your core values and let them guide your actions.

Values are what you, your stakeholders, clients, suppliers, staff, and shareholders, buy into collectively, especially if your values are the same as each other’s. This may alienate some who feel your business should have a voice and make a statement, but it’s impossible to satisfy everyone and you, and your business, have a responsibility to its stakeholders.

The hard lessons learned show that sometimes it’s better to say nothing and focus on delivering the best product or service you can. However, when you need to react, react from a position of your values, and let them guide you.

Your business may win or lose some market share, but the market who share your values will become more loyal and strengthen your brand image in your market.

Our advice:

• Don’t react unless you need too.
• When you do, do so unapologetically and from position of your core-values.

Speak to most business owners and the feeling of being trapped in their business will come up often. Feeling trapped in your business results in you constantly chasing daily tasks and not being able to rise above the noise and work on your business. So how do you find the Freedom to move from this state?

Focus on building a sellable business. Having a sellable business is the goal and brings you, the Business Owner, the ultimate Freedom.

You might be thinking, “I don’t want to sell my business” or “how does having a sellable business result in the ultimate freedom?” Let’s elaborate a little.

A sellable business gives you options. It allows you to choose how you operate in your business and allows you to grow one of the biggest assets in your and/ or your shareholders personal financial portfolio.

Sellable means you give yourself the following options:

• Your business will start scaling when you start building it to be sellable.

• Working in your business – being an employee – you earn a monthly salary and bonus/ commission structures. If you’re already earning a salary from your business, is this by choice or need? By having a sellable business, you choose to work in your business, not need to work in your business.

• Remove yourself from the daily operations and let your management team or Directors run the business for you. You can choose to either be a shareholder only, drawing dividends and growing your share value or you can choose to part of the Board of Directors and steer the business.

• You can hand over your business as a legacy to your family or management teams. Your business could live well past your lifetime and be handed down to your children or Management to continue past you.

Interesting, that when this post was written, Yvon Chouinard had just announce that his business, Patagonia, will be handed down and have only one shareholder after his death. The Earth. Leaving his 3-billion-dollar business to assist in the climate effort as his legacy. A great example of building a legacy business.

• You can sell your business or parts of it to competitors or other interested parties. This can be for a return on your investment and capital gain, or as a means of growing your business with additional capital investment and partners.

With these options, you get to choose, and that choice is Freedom.

So how do you build a sellable business?

Without running through all the various aspects, you can find in OptiGrowth’s Executive Advisory Programs, there is a distinctive difference between Business Owners who are thinking entrepreneurially vs non-entrepreneurially.

An entrepreneur is constantly looking for the next big idea and when that idea comes around, they will have the ability to action them quickly. To do this, a great entrepreneur will quickly find other people capable to do what they don’t want to, can’t or don’t have time for. This means delegating tasks and functions and not holding on to them.

Delegating is a complex effort. It requires a business model that can work, processes that keep the standards and quality of the business to its highest levels and, most difficult of it all, finding the right people to deliver to these.

Your business becomes most sellable as soon you can get the business to operate with little to no input from you, as the founder and owner. That means that if you are removed from day-to-day activities, the business will operate to the same standard, as if you were there.

See the details of the Testimonial here: 2020-09 African Roots+Seven Sisters – OptiGrowth Testimonial

The African Trust Wines & Seven Sisters Wines brand evolved from its association with the seven Brutus sisters of Paternoster. The Brutus family lived in a small fishing village on the western coast. The Brutus sisters and their baby brother left the tranquillity of their sleepy town at a very early age when the family was evicted from their home. They yearned to return but were not able to do so give the unfavourable circumstances of the time.

For more on this dynamic enterprise and its proud brand: http://www.sevensisters.co.za

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines a courtesy call as: “… a visit, or phone call that a company makes to customers, for example, to thank them for their business or ask if they are satisfied with the company’s service: Use courtesy calls to encourage feedback and strengthen customer relations.”

To be more accurate – and in our experience – the Unscheduled, Unexpected and Unplanned (3 U’s) courtesy call is one of the most powerful ways to build customer relations in the modern era of business protocol, corporate governance, socio-economic and legislated environments.

We cannot remember ever making a courtesy call to an existing customer (for no particular reason) and not feeling a sense of worth and value thereafter! Here are our golden rules that we live-by in making a courtesy call:

• We will never make an “in-person” courtesy call at a customer’s place of work. For us, that is what scheduled meetings are for and as such remains the standard in ou business engagement, whether it’s for formal, or business-social meetings.
• Instead, we prefer to make a point of irregular, unscheduled telephonic calls to our customers (and other business stakeholders), placing emphasis on the fact that we are calling for no particular reason. And fundamentally meaning it.
• In our opinion, we don’t see a follow-up call to check customer satisfaction, as a courtesy call. Every professional service provider, or supplier should check on satisfaction as standard practice. In fact, the customer will not be surprised to receive such a follow-up, after-service call. It’s the expected thing to do.
• What is not expected by the customer however, is the mindfulness of a service provider to call and check-in unexpectedly, with no agenda, no expectation and purely as a professional courtesy.

Our 3 U’s to a courtesy call:

• Unscheduled: irregularity of your courtesy calls over the lifespan of the customer relations is the key consideration here – no schedule to it, but it is a pointer engraved in your business ethos.
• Unexpected: the customer must be surprised to hear from you – in our experience “pleasantly surprised” will be the norm, once your customer gets to know that you are genuinely interested in the first instance.
• Unplanned: This ties-in with the unscheduled part of the call and underlines the “for no particular reason” statement.

Jon Kabat-Zinn defined Mindfulness as: “ the awareness which arises when we pay attention, on purpose, without judgement, to the experience of the present moment, in the service of insight, wisdom and compassion.”

See the details of the Testimonial here:  2020-05 Pinocchio Creche – Testimonial

In turn, we are proud to be associated with Helen & Maggie and their business brands. In 1974 the Domestic Workers’ Association in South Africa was founded by Maggie Shongwe. It was a labour organisation fighting for the rights of low-income earners, including domestic workers, casual labourers and gardeners. In 2001 the organisation was re-launched under the Domestic Workers’ Association Educational Trust.

In 1984, Pinocchio Crèche, a project branch of the Domestic Workers’ Association was launched.

Maggie’s daughter, Helen, an Executive Director at Pinocchio Crèche, was also one of the first children enrolled at the crèche. It’s essentially where she grew up.

In 2010, Pinocchio Creche launched a Cape Town International Service Learning partnership with Howard University School of Social Work in Washington DC. Over 300 members of faculty, Masters and Doctorial students have passed through their doors to learn and experience social work within the early childhood sector.

for more on the DWA Trust and Pinocchio Creche: https://lnkd.in/eipHSE4

This entails asking yourself a few pertinent questions, which will help you realise where your business is sitting at this present moment in time.

If you know what you are great at, then you need to focus in on that. Knowing where you need to improve is just as important. One cannot bury your head in the sand, hoping that your weaknesses will go away. Tied closely is knowing where you are vulnerable. Maybe it’s that your cashflow is low and a big hiccup could set you reeling? Maybe your staff are not pulling their weight? Further, what gives you that unique edge? Today, if you don’t have an offering that is unique, you are not going to last very long.

With OptiGrowth, we go through a set of steps which guide our clients to take make mini goals in order to achieve their bigger goals. All the steps are part of a funnel, ultimately starting with SHAREHOLDER ASPIRATIONS and ending with an ACTION PLAN.

Strategic planning and driving practical, measurable actions is where many entrepreneurs and business owners get stuck. Essentially, if you didn’t run a S.W.O.T. exercise before you started, you have been running on hopes. However, it is never too late to re-evaluate.

Very often, what we think our business looks like, is a very different animal to others.

If you are ready to ask all these questions and need some guidance, OptiGrowth is ready to assist.

While their stresses and worries are real, we always ask the question, “Are you in control of your business climate?”

There are most definitely elements you cannot control, such as fuel price hikes, interest rate spikes and regulations from SARS, but you can control your own business climate.

What do we mean?

It all starts with knowing what the overall health is of your business. Are basic foundations in place, such as sales and marketing plans, a sound financial platform, staff that complement your brand and business ethos, enough cash flow to survive comfortably, and a few other vital aspects?

Without this health check, you cannot know where your business stands currently, and therefore you cannot see where it could go.

Once you have this clearly in front of you, it is easy to navigate through the steps on how to manage and control your business climate.

Clients will do what they will do. The taxman will wield his fiscal sword and life will get in the way, but once you realise you are in control, then there is no stopping your growth.

There are essentially 2 types of environments that can affect your business growth. These are:

The External Micro Environment – your suppliers, your customers, public opinion, your staff, and your competitors.

The External Macro Environment – the economic aspect, the social and cultural factors, the political and legal elements, technology, natural and ecological influences, as well as a business’s demographics.

Understanding all these areas is important in order to work out how to control their effect on your business. You may be thinking to yourself that it would be impossible to know all of these elements well enough to control them. Yet, you would be surprised how much you already do know.

We are subjected to these factors on a daily basis and if there are any that you are very uncomfortable with, you can always reach out to a professional who specialises in that arena.

The one detail you need to remember is that you are not alone in this world when it comes to your business.

Optigrowth was formed with that in mind, and our success has been proven over and over again, in the way we are able to assist business owners.

We understand business climates and are here to guide you every step of the way.

If you see the benefit in understanding and controlling your business climate, then please make contact with us today.

Training your muscles to not only adapt to the new regime but also to grow and improve, takes time and effort.

The same can be equated to running your business. Ask anyone, no matter what stage they are in their business journey, nothing was ever built in a day and certainly, nothing came from sitting idly to one side.

There are certain steps you need to take in order to train your business muscle.

Health Check

Much like the warning sign pasted on most gym equipment – Check with your doctor before partaking in any exercise regime – your business should go for a health check. There are a couple of elements to look at; scalability, your financial soundness, your sustainability and competitive advantage.

And, having regular health checks, is also a must, as your business goes through highs and lows.

Vision and Strategy

No long distance athlete will ever go out to train, day in and out, without having a plan of action. The goal is to finish the race in a certain amount of time, but to get there, he must know how much training he needs to do, and at what levels he must train.

Similarly, before you even start trading, you should have a strategy as to how you will reach your goal and what is required of you to achieve those goals.

And, it really is never too late to put this plan together.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Knowing what you are good at and knowing what you are bad at is essential in the process of training, on all levels. Let’s take a triathlete, who has to master 3 disciplines; swimming, running, and cycling. If he knows that he is a terrible swimmer, he will focus in on this part more, putting in more hours, and honing his stroke to perfection.

In your business, if you are not great with numbers, then rather look at either outsourcing your finances to a professional or taking a few courses in order to get yourself up to speed. If you can see that your recurring income is low, then your focus should be on marketing your products or services in such a manner that you attract retainer style clients.

SWOT = Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats

Do you know your business’s SWOT Analysis?

Practice makes Perfect

Focus and determination. Two words which are synonymous with all successful people. If you don’t put in the hard work, you’re more than likely not going to achieve your goals. Simple! And, giving up isn’t an option. Try, try and try again, but ensure too that you are not barking up the wrong tree either. Know what works and what doesn’t.

Raise that glass

We, all too often, trudge along, doing the work, and burning the candles, but forget to congratulate ourselves on a job well done. When that cyclist speeds over the finish line and lifts his arms in triumph, he is thanking himself for all the hard slog and long hours he has endured to get there.

Do you take the time to look back and see where you started and how far you have come? Take a moment, every now and then, and appreciate the journey you have travelled in your business. It is a doggy-dog world out there and every small achievement should be celebrated.

The same should be applied to business owners and their clients.

Ask yourself – HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR CLIENTS?

And, we don’t mean that you need to be house buddies with them – how well do you know their needs, their wants, their desires? By knowing these things, you can then assess how your offering can provide solutions to those wants, needs and desires.

Besides gathering all the obvious information about your customer – name, address, invoice details, company details, type of business, etc. etc. Ask questions that will help you understand just what their pain points are. What do they struggle with the most and why.

Knowledge really is power, so ensure you know all there is to know about your customer. Then formulate a plan where your service or product can take away their pain.

Data is king, and if you are smart, you will use that data to analyse markets you are selling into, or want to sell into.

There will be some information your client won’t be happy to impart, such information that only banks, insurers and financial businesses can get away with asking for. But, the type of info you want doesn’t lie entirely in the numbers.

Here is how you can get to know your client better:

ASK THEM WHAT THEIR PROBLEMS ARE AROUND YOUR INDUSTRY

You may be surprised to hear some of the answers, and it is in the knowing where you can find the solutions.

FIND OUT WHERE THEY SPEND THEIR MONEY

Not an easy find, but an honest conversation can lead you to understand what is important to them and where they are willing to spend their money. This will help you work out what they value most. Knowing what their values are can help you structure your offering differently.

LISTEN

We have said this before, and we will say it again. Listening, really actively listening to your clients will get you closer and in turn in a better position to give them what they want and need.

CORRECT WHAT IS WRONG

A customer survey can help you realise what is not working in your business and what you need to change. A direct conversation can bring those results up even faster. Then, all you have to do is make it right. Often times, clients move away because their needs are not being met or their gripes are not being attended to. Most people will give a supplier a second chance if they know that they genuinely want to make it right.

KNOW YOUR BRAND & SIMILAR MARKET TRENDS

Doing some in-depth homework on what happens during the marketing and buying process with your brand can bring some amazing and useful data to you. Look at the trends of what past clients have done when presented with your product or service. Is there a pattern and can you change anything to make that buying process quicker or flow differently?

In addition, look at what similar markets and competitors are doing. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Steal a bit with your eyes, and then roll it out differently to suit your unique brand.

It really can be that simple.

Are you ready to know your client better?

If not, grab a coffee with us and let’s explore how we can help you Know Your Customer better.