Do you ever want to be given a plan, a step-by step approach or a list of instructions, “Do this and your business will grow”?

Well this is pretty close…

In the ever-evolving world of business, achieving sustainable growth is a goal that's often easier said than done. It requires a well-thought-out strategy and the ability to adapt to changing market conditions.

To help you navigate this journey, I’d like to share the SVO Model of Sustainability and Growth TM – a simple yet effective framework that emphasizes simplicity, verification, and seizing opportunities. By following this model, you can create a robust foundation for your business's long-term success.

If there’s a common culprit that’s discussed amongst business owners and entrepreneurs - it’s this:

There’s never enough time to get it all done! OR I wear too many hats!

The theme here usually involves a very hard-working but overworked owner.

There’s a desire here to gain back some much-needed time and space.

Can you relate?

There are three foundational ways to free-up more of your time so you can go from feeling ‘overworked’ to having more ease and spaciousness in your business (doesn’t that sound nice?!).

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is ‘how do I grow my business’?

While businesses each have their own founder/owner strengths and opportunities, there are foundational steps to growing any business.

And, when I’m working with my clients, we look at where they are now and where they want to be. We look at what has worked in the past, what hasn’t and how we can use what’s working to fuel greater growth.

We reverse-engineer from where they want to be to hone in on the specific steps they need to take to get there.

What I’m sharing below is a guide so you can self-identify where you are and what next steps could benefit you in your business…

Thinking about the next 10 years or ‘when’ you’ll be ready to think about handing over your business to prepare for that event is like waiting until the day before you hand over your house keys to its new owner to paint the walls, fix the leaky faucet and renovate run down bathroom. It’s too much too late.

And, consider what you could be leaving on the table by doing so?

You could be passing up, with some adjustments, a beautifully run company that actually reduces your headaches.

You could be passing up additional value in the business by not having some of its functions running more smoothly with a little TLC. AKA leaving money on the table.

You could be passing over obvious headaches to the new owner but that existing employees and customers still have to deal with, jeopardizing retention.

The belief that ‘getting ready to pass’ down is reserved for the actual event is actually robbing you of more money, more joy and likely more stability now.

One of the secrets to being an attractive company to run and purchase? Read more here.

Have you ever felt the weight of running your business?

Wouldn’t it be nice not to have everything resting on your shoulders?

Wouldn’t it be nice to feel supported and know that certain things are ‘handled’, and you aren’t solely responsible to make key things happen in your business?

I’m not a car person by any means, but this analogy popped into my mind as I was thinking about how I often hear (and experience) the challenge of feeling like you’re alone in your business.

I was speaking recently with someone who had sold not one, but two businesses in the past several years.

I asked her what she found was the more challenging aspects of selling. She said that one of the biggest challenges was getting her processes in order. She didn’t build it with selling it in mind and certainly didn’t think about capturing her processes as they operated.

So, preparing to sell her business the first time was quite onerous because it’s something she had to start from scratch.

It wasn’t until this was in place that her business could be properly evaluated (along with other metrics).

Standard operating procedures are not only valuable when you’re trying to sell your business, they are actually very powerful to…

I always loved the message from Michael Gerber’s E-Myth that says:

“Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work ON your business, rather than in it with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.”

He makes the point that your business is not your life.

Your business and your life are two separate things.

Your business has its own set of rules, its own purpose apart from yours.

Realizing this concept can support that separation and objective perspective where you fit, in relation business.

In a world consistent overworking and putting off personal plans to ‘get ahead at work’ is still a badge of honour for some (things are are changing but not fast enough in my opinion), sometimes the idea of taking vacation gets shoved aside.

But the research and benefits of taking time away are quite compelling:

If you’ve ever had the thought:

“It’s too much work to take vacation, so I’m not going to bother,” then you need to read this.

How can we prepare to be absent from work or business without it causing too much stress so it negates the positive effects that time away can bring?

It’s about planning ahead and creating processes for the things you regularly do so they are more easily teachable and repeatable by others.

The more planning you do, the less stress going away will be.

Maybe the reason your business is wearing you out isn’t necessarily because you’re burning the candle at both ends, or worried about making your bills, or because of another late order arriving.

While these are all worrisome and tiring, these could be symptoms of a deeper issue.

It could be due to a lack of capacity and diversity in one or all of three key areas: employees, suppliers, and/or customers.

How dependent you and your business is on any one employee, customer, or supplier can be a real indicator of business health, how high your business risk is, and how you, as the owner, are shouldering the effects of this directly. And, if that one employee is YOU, well that would be a signal of a lack of capacity or diversification of employees and skills sets.

I was recently speaking with a business owner who is dependent on one employee (themselves!) who tried to hire another employee recently.

They said ‘it didn’t work out’ and ‘it wasn’t a good fit’. And, they doubted that there would be a good employee out there that could do what they’re looking for.

I probed a little more and it became clear that they really didn’t believe another person could do what they could do and could serve the clients the same way they could.

I have heard variations on this theme from a number of business owners.

So what’s the answer?

Take a look at the three areas I mentioned and see how your business fares in these areas.

Is your business satisfying your ‘WHY’?

In order to fulfill your WHY for being in business, the company you created has to be able to make the impact you had intended it to make.

Whether that’s impacting families through therapeutic approaches, providing housing for seniors, providing financial security for families, or helping others build healthy businesses, without your own healthy business, it becomes harder to fulfill that mission.

That’s why I love these markers of business value. It’s not only your own business you’re building, but having a healthy business means that you can change the lives of your clients and customers.

That’s the real and compelling legacy here and a huge reason why I do what I do. One of my big WHYs is to help you to be successful in growing a strong, healthy, and sustainable business that impacts others.

I’m deeply motivated to improve the lives of others through economic growth and supporting businesses that make a difference in our communities so we all thrive.

One of the markers of a healthy business is how cash flows through it. (This is the fifth driver of business value.)

One of the most common pains I hear from business owners is that there’s not enough cash. Or it shows up as their desire to ‘do more marketing’ or '‘increase sales’.

Is your business a cash suck?

Or does it generate cash quite handily?

If cash is rarely on hand in your business when you need it, you may want to consider exploring these areas:

There are 8 drivers of company value that contribute to the valuation of whether your company will be easy to pass on or to sell in the future. Through my work supporting business owners to grow their businesses in a way that maximizes their future exit options, I have found that these 8 drivers aren’t always obvious.

And, through focusing on these 8 drivers, this is the process to grow your company, so if you’re not looking to sell anytime soon, these drivers will offer you a roadmap to enjoy growth in the meantime.

The first driver I would love to talk about first is Hub and Spoke. I wanted to start here because typically, almost every owner I’ve worked with has an opportunity in this area…

There’s so much to say on this topic and how it relates to being successful.

The perspective I’d like to take on this today, with you, is to illuminate how powerful it is when you create focus and simplicity in your work.

There’s a caveat here: Simplicity does NOT equal easy :).

If you’re scrambling in your role or business and not seeming to get the traction you want, an injection of clarity can help.

I help Business Owners and Leaders create a positive social impact through their business by helping them to grow and be sustainable.

Our current reality is the sum of our actions and decisions.

If some of those actions and decisions are not aligned to a single focus or destination then it’s a little like…

This sometimes feels so elusive - where are they? How do I get more?

If you’ve been in business for a while then you actually have some data to draw on. Instead of looking outward, look inward to your previous experiences.

These experiences can tell you a LOT about how to find more clients/customers like the ones you already have. It can be a great source of information for you.

We are living in an unprecedented time. COVID19 represents difficulty and complexities for us all and that doesn’t even include those who are ill and our skilled health-care workers facing this in a more acute way.

Setting aside ensuring your family and loved ones are safely tucked away, as a business owner, this can be a daunting time. But ‘how’ daunting is how you look at it.

In one of my past live’s, I had the opportunity to co-lead and build a pandemic response for a Fortune 500 company in Canada, which fed into the Continuity planning for the organization. That experience has given me the opportunity to look at this situation from a unique perspective.

“I’m too busy growing my business to think about processes”

“Process stifles creativity in our organization”

“Process is considered a dirty word in our company”

I’ve seen too many companies suffer from their belief that if they put structure and flow into their business, their people will feel ‘stifled’.

You know what lack of process, or infrastructure does? It inhibits communication, reduces role clarity, creates inconsistent performance, creates uncertainty when problems arise, and slows growth. Unfortunately, the list doesn’t end there.

Having systems in your business is like having healthy eating habits...once they're established they contribute to longevity, vitality and create a solid foundation for great things to happen - such as growth in your business.

If you were to take a survey of Business Owners and ask them why they went into business, many would say one of their top reasons was for flexibility and freedom.

However, when the business gets going and you are juggling all the different roles, it feels like you have everything BUT flexibility and freedom.