Growing your business can be fun, challenging, rewarding and all-encompassing. It can also feel frustrating, never-enough and like spinning your wheels.

An interesting question to consider if you have aspirations to expand is: how are you measuring growth?

There’s the traditional metrics of using revenue and profit. Those are great measures.

However, measuring growing using only the metric of growing top-line sales is using a very narrow lense.

AND these metrics are lagging indicators. They are the result of the activities you’re engaging in.

What are your leading indicators? (These are the actions you’re taking that LEAD TO the results you’re looking for.)

Create a business model that turns your company into a valuable asset.

The definition of an asset: property owned by a person or company, regarded as having value and available to meet debts, commitments, or legacies.

Research shows that the number of employer businesses with 1-99 employees accounts for 97% of businesses in Canada (source: GOC: Key Small Business Statistics 2021).

And 67.6% of all employees work for small businesses.

As employers and businesses that often bring innovation and social impact through their products and services, what would it look like if more of these companies survived into the next generation? What if many could sustain and continue to bring their innovation, social impact, and dependable products and services to future generations?

This is the seventh in the discussion of the eight growth drivers that generate value.

There are many ways to create loyal customers such as providing a valuable product/service and excellent customer service.

There’s another way that you can extend this value that will increase your customer loyalty - creating a model or offering, that solves your customer’s need so they buy what you have consistently.

Recurring revenue makes your company more predictable, extends the lifetime value of your customer, and ultimately makes your business more valuable. Valuable to you now and in the future.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how cash moving through your business is its lifeforce. It allows you to fulfill your mission, strengthen the business so it, your employees, and customers thrive.

Creating a recurring revenue stream is another way to bring cash flow into your business to create these automatic sales.

While there are many ways to do this, I’ll share how a simple service contract could be the place to start for many…

People start a business for all types of reasons. Some start looking for more freedom and flexibility or financial freedom. Some start because they have a great idea that they haven’t seen in the marketplace. Some want to create a legacy or make a positive change in their industry. Your reasons could be all, some, or other reasons for starting your business.

But whatever your reason is, this question is relevant to consider:

Do you want to create a valuable business?

What does valuable mean?