Yes. My friends, there is an advantage. I am not very tall myself, but I am not actually talking about that. I am talking about size of business. So sometimes people want to grow.
But there are advantages to just being a small business. And there are disadvantages, tons of them, to being large.
And this is the modern era, where you have the advantage. Even Amazon started small. And they have beaten many of the others. But now they have grown into a giant — a gargantuan.
You still have advantages against people like Amazon but you certainly have advantages against others, including your competitors.
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Now what happens is, businesses grow big and they grow fat and they grow bloated. And what that means is, they have multiple layers of management, they have multiple layers of reporting, because as your business grows and succeeds, you need to bring in systems.
You Need to Bring in Systems
Most businesses think they need to bring in systems, management, levels of management, audits, double check, checks, meetings, oh all those things.
There are ways of doing systems that are not the way that other businesses are doing it. But it means that if you want to change your product line, you can just do it.
You can add a new product line, a big company has multiple venues such as stores, warehouses, operating in different countries, they’ve got to set up policies.
They’ve got to check up different regulations, they got to make sure they comply. Now of course you have to comply. But only in one place probably.
They have check ups that they have to then put in place. They have to get training because they have systems. And your training, you can do it fast. You can get people active fast.
You can, if you’ve got a website, you can add it to the website today, or tomorrow. Maybe it’s going to take you a week, but it’s going to be quicker.
You Can Change
If something’s not working on pricing, you can put prices up. You can put prices down. Remember on Friday, I talked about pricing and I was saying you should charge more.
And you should have various types of pricing. But in a big, mega organization, they may have other things to consider. And they cannot change. Now you have the option to test pricing.
You can put prices up. You could double your prices. Let’s say you’re painter and decorator. Generally you don’t go along and say, ‘oh I am $30 an hour’, or whatever you charge.
You go along and say, that will be $280 for that job. So all of those jobs that you would charge $280, try $380, just do that. And see what happens, I bet you, bet you, you get just as many.
But you can do that, or you could then think to yourself, wow that worked. Next week, I am going to try $480 and then you go think, wow.
Next week it does make any difference, gets you same number of jobs, twice as much profit. Do you understand that? Profit?
Then the next time you charge 580 and then suddenly you don’t get so many. So you think, ‘Woah, I have hit it. Now I can cut back to 480.’
You can do that. You can do that anytime you like. A big company cannot take advantage of these things, you can jump in with email marketing, a big company that’s a policy shift, they’ve got to get people to sign.
They’ve got to bring in contractors, they got to do it, translate into different languages, get it out into different countries.
They have to get writers, they have to do all these kind of things. You can write one in 5 minutes time, after this send it out, 5 minutes later. Honestly, it’s that quick.
Don’t Always Try to Grow
Sometimes when you grow, you have to put in layers of growth, of what would appear to be management because there will be a limit to what you can look after.
If you go from a one man band or one woman band and start to employ staff, at some point or other, you’ll find that you become less effective when you have more than 5 people reporting to you.
So then you need someone to report to someone else. And what do you have? Do you have, so you have 7, I don’t know, say you end up with 7 staff, you get 5 reporting to you, 2 to somebody new.
Do you promote one of those? Are they management material? All these kind of things start to come in. this is when business gets in the way.
And then suddenly you have to employ someone at management, who doesn’t bring in any more money. And they have to manage staff. T
His is the traditional way of doing things. Now I would promote a different way, there are ways of systemizing and if you were to follow or join the owners club, we’ll show you how to do that.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. But lot of people just don’t have the time or ability and will do the traditional stuff, and then your company starts to get bloated.
And then when you get management, you need to train them. And then, what about you? You are a manager, are you going to get management training? or you are just going to assume you know how to do it.
Are you going to think, Can’t afford it? Or don’t have time. Why don’t you have time? Because you need more staff to make time. And those staff will cost money and don’t generate any money. And you see what happen.
Sometimes Small is Beautiful
So take advantage of it. Now I am not saying don’t grow. I have a company that has management and so on. And we learned, trust me. I have done this before I’ve built a company before. It was horrible.
It was horrible because didn’t know what I was doing. I just made it up as I went along because I had no one to get any advice from, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Now you can talk to people like me.
But when I sold that business, 2003, for a pretty penny, and it was profitable. When I sold it, I decided not to do this again.
And then I did, because everyone says that, I set up a new company, but I decided to do it differently. I then found it how to do it.
And tried tested, tried again, tested, tried again, until I found what worked. And that’s the kind of stuff I’m teaching you, or explaining.
Because if I’d only known what I know now, I’d probably still keep the first company. It would be huge and it will be set up the way that doesn’t cause stress.
So you can build one but at a certain size. As an optimum. And then it cuts out. And honestly, I just want you to have the experience.
Small is beautiful, you can act quickly, you can make changes, you can do things. Go for it. Okay. Go for it. Don’t try and grow too quick.
Monday Book Recommendation
Anyway this is Monday. You know I always recommend book for the week. This time it’s very special. The book is, it’s more of a, sort of system.
It’s called “Piranha Marketing”. It is by “Joe Polish” and it’s also narrated with Tim Paulson. It’s brilliant. But this is the funny thing, I would tailor this, if you got that and did everything that Joe and Tim explained, you will never need to listen to me ever again.
Please do though. Honestly. It is that good. I re listen to Piranha marketing every 6 months. It is fabulous. If you run a service business, he started as a carpet cleaner. If you run a service based business, it’s going to, just open your eyes. Go for it. I’ll be back tomorrow.