Small Business Part 1

[Admin]

I have set up another site which is all about Beauty Therapy for my wife Corrine and these people are all in small business and like all small business, they struggle from day to day so I will be posting there tips that may help them. But, I also thought that it may help small business in our aviation industry like flying schools etc so I will copy those posts and post them here just in case they may help.

 

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Hi, my name is Ian and together with my wife Corrine, a qualified professional beauty therapist, we have created this site to hopefully help everyone in the beauty industry.

 

Each week I will add a post that could help you in managing your small business more successfully. I have an MBA (Masters degree in Business and Administration) and a degree in computer sciences along with many other formal business training. Years ago I was sent to New Zealand to sell off the public transport system to private enterprise and whilst there I was approached by the NZ Institute of Management to mentor a small business woman and my posts here will be about the tools I used to help her not only in her small business but also in her personal life. Two years later she was awarded the ANZ Business Woman of the Year Award.

 

So I hope these posts will help you in the same way, and each one will be noted with Part 1, 2 etc

 

Next week I will introduce you to M.O.S.T. and it is a process that is used not only by small business but also large corporates to begin steering their business into the future. It will answer the most important question of all "What are we in business for and where is it going". In one strategic planning session where I along with all the other executives of a $60m+ organisation were locked away for a week to create the future of the organisation, we spent the whole week just on MOST. But you can also use MOST to get the most out of your personal life as well which is what I also did for that lady that I mentored.

 

In short, MOST stands for:

 

Mission: This is the hardest part of MOST as it must be done correctly to define what your business is going to be all about for the next 5+ years and it provides the pinnacle from which all other components of MOST are derived from. Mission will be the subject of Part 2 which I will post next week.

 

Objectives: From your Mission you will create objectives that are in line with your Mission. These objectives MUST be quantifiable so we can measure over the next 5 years or ? on whether we are achieving our objectives. Quantifiable Objectives can be like increase sales of waxing by 25% year 1, 15% year 2 etc. These figures are important because they will also lead into the financial management that we will get into down the track. Personal Objectives could be Get Fitter by being able to run 5 klms a day, you get the idea.

 

Strategies: These are the strategies we are going to use to achieve our Objectives. You will create several Strategies for every Objective and they could be promotion, enhanced product lines, pricing, etc. In marketing there is a tool set called "The 4 P's of Marketing", Price, Place, Product and Promotion. We will explore these as well down the track.

 

Tactics (or Tasks): In the final part of MOST we will set the tasks that we are going to do for the Strategies that will achieve our Objectives so we will achieve our Mission. We will set several tasks that we will undertake for each of our Strategies, not a type of "To Do List" but a "Will Do List". They will be a part of our daily work all of which you are doing every day to help and improve your business, they will not be extra work but consumed in our normal daily work. We will find ways to do what we do every day better, but these tasks will feed up the MOST to a better future and better managed business with a great future.

 

Overall M.O.S.T will help you to get the most out of your business and your personal life.

 

Down the track we will then start to look at areas of business management like greater returns per sq/ft of floor space, vertical and horizontal integration of product and service lines, employment, financial management, marketing, sales and much more but we need to get MOST working first because everything will come from it especially answering the question of "What are we in business for and where is it going".

 

There is a fairy tale line that goes like this "Any path will lead you somewhere, if you don't know where you are going", through these tips, together we WILL know where you are going and HOW you are going to get there.

 

Hope this has been some help and please, post any comments that you may have, thanks

 

 

[Deskpilot]

Nice one Ian. I'm only in the business of trying to stay alive but I'm sure your guide will be 'most' beneficial to others.

 

Edit:

 

Believe it or not, all businesses, however small, need to incorporate some form of Quality Control, or better still, Quality Assurance. Neither are mentioned in your list. Q.C. is checking the results and making sure they're up to standard . Q.A. is checking the process to make sure that the standard will always be met. Spend some time thinking about it. Could save you a court case.

 

 

[yampy]

All the very best wishes for your new venture ..

 

 

[eightyknots]

Years ago I was sent to New Zealand to sell off the public transport system to private enterprise

Hi Ian, are you aware that the NZ government bought the whole railway system back? ...at about twice the initial sale price!

 

I hope your venture works out.

 

 

[Admin]

Hi Ian, are you aware that the NZ government bought the whole railway system back? ...at about twice the initial sale price!I hope your venture works out.

Did they really, is The Yellow Bus Company in Auckland and Big Red in Wellington still owned by Stage Coach from Scotland? The spider web inner suburban buses in Auckland was one of my initiatives, and very very profitable given that when I got there The YBC was losing $30m of rate payers money and it had to be turned around first before it could be sold

 

 

[eightyknots]

The bus companies you're referring to are owned by Infratil; they have a majority (2/3) share holding in Wellington International Airport.

 

I thought you were talking about KiwiRail. That was sold by the government and then bought back some years later.

 

 

[Admin]

Yes Mate, the rail and bus companies were all being sold off by the legislation introduced in about 1993, took many years to do it though because it was a big job and political especially when they also brought in MMP and the Alliance Political Party with an agenda of retaining public assets.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Or as one American multimillionaire put it when asked about his success "I just find out what people want and give it to them".

 

 

[old man emu]

I have set up another site which is all about Beauty Therapy for my wife Corrine

I think it is not very nice to suggest that Corrine is in need of beauty therapy. I've spoken to her on the phone and she seems to have a nice personality.

 

OME

 

 

[facthunter]

I have a good face for radio too OME. Nev