The Art of Doing Less

5th October 2020 By The ActionKnowHow Team

The Art of Doing Less to Achieve More

Ever found yourself missing a family event or working late just to keep up with the tasks you have to do in your business?

If the answer is yes then this blog is for you. You see, all of us think at some time in our working life that doing loads HAS to the be the answer to success, less = no work, more activity = more cash, right? Well I think it’s fundamentally flawed thinking. As a fairly old (almost 60) ex lawyer I remember when we used to be paid by the word, minute and hour, our worth was measured in the hours we billed and how much of that billing hit the firm’s bank account ie not disputed or a bad debt.

You are worth more than cash

That is not how we measure ourselves of course, nor is it, in 2020, an enlightened way to run a business when this year has taken the whole world and shaken it up and our personal and business lives with it. Working yourself into the ground burning both ends of the day and not feeling worthy unless you are in front of your PC tapping out more work is a big fat horrible danger signal that your life has got seriously out of kilter.

The way law firm partners thought when I worked in a traditional practice was how much could we flog the staff to earn this month? Do you know how many hours a lawyer works to bill 6 or 7 hours each day? Normally around 10-11 hours. Hardly a shock that by early 2000 (when we did a sharp exit) we saw many lawyers buying camper vans and heading for the hills.

Unprecedented levels of burn out across all professions

This is not just about lawyers though, you can insert any professional title in there and its the same, our internet obsession and the change of business to be 24/7 or at least operate always 7 days a week via a 12 hour day have changed the rules. We are not clear – I think – on what is expected of us any longer or how to manage the new way of working which means we can work any time without it being all of our time. That is my big question and one I have asked myself repeatedly, I have some but not all of the answers, my life is a journey but I can share what I have learned so far and what is working for me.

Examine your thinking

You need to look at doing things better and handling less using a higher brain function ie thinking and evaluating what to do, so its done once and right so you are not reacting and just processing your ‘to do’ list. Your ‘to do’ list also never ends, it just gets longer with more stuff being added daily. Sounds like you? Think again!

Another way

If you have a long ‘to do’ list and are spending your day worrying about fitting it all in and constantly being given or adding new tasks its time to rearrange your thinking. I use a project book, one of those split into coloured sections so I can use a colour coding for each project area I am working on plus a master board, nothing fancy just an A3 drawing block with all the projects in a big mind map on one page so I can check what is important and what is moving/slipping or needs attention.

For each project I colour code the name so I know a green one is live and underway, a red one is in trouble and needs my attention and the blue one is pending ie I am waiting on for someone else to make progress, violet ones are dreams ie ideas I may or may not revisit but they sure as hell are not having any time now devoted to them so they are on paper but have no flesh or time devoted to them now.

My green, blue and red projects have space in my project book, a page for each project tasks with my main aim written at the top. All of these plans and lists have scheduled time in the diary. If it’s not scheduled it does not happen. This stops reactivity, burn out and stuff getting missed. It also allows me to plan my time accurately around home life, my beloved husband, friends and dogs are always going to come first and have time devoted to them.

Oh yeah, how does that work when the sh*t hits the fan then?

Sh*t happens, ill-health strikes without warning, I went out one Saturday afternoon, fell over and spent over 3 years recovering from a traumatic leg injury needing major surgery and twice weekly physio. I did not miss one day off work, did not lose one client and earned more money the year I was injured than I had done at any time in the last 5 before it. I was super organised, and the schedule enabled others to take over some of my tasks easily without the fuss a disorganised working life can bring. Now in 2020, another type of illness in my family grounded everything to a standstill and I needed to change everything about the way in which I had worked for over 30 years. This sort of framework enables you to do or delegate without the need for full engagement at those times when you are under par or lacking physical and/or emotional energy.

Will you fall off the wagon periodically even if you adopt these systems? Of course, but done regularly and getting you the results you want will make them easier to get back into when something unexpected happens. Fancy some support in getting this sort of plan in your life? Email support@actionknowhow.com for details of courses and programs that would help you sort out your framework and paint a better picture for living in your life and business.

Doing the numbers

21st December 2016 By The ActionKnowHow Team

Doing the numbers

Charles Dickens certainly understood the principles of business. In David Copperfield he wrote Mr Micawber as saying,

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

The headline turnover figure is unimportant. Although annual turnover of £1m might sound like an announcement from a successful SME, a little digging may reveal that the business is still operating at a loss. Some businesses are designed to do this in the early days because they recognise that, for their business to thrive, they need to invest heavily in marketing to raise awareness for profit later. Shrewd investors understand this and will support the business, up to a point.

Start Ups with little cash

The majority of start ups, however, don’t have external investors but follow a gradual process of development using their own funds. Because of this (and because it’s the boring bit) most forget to do the numbers properly.

While any sale or a new client can give you a great feeling of accomplishment, if the numbers are wrong your great feeling could evaporate once you realise how much your business is costing you to run.

Let’s take a look at a business start-up model that was very popular recently – the cup cake baker. I’ve chosen this for two reasons.

It’s an easy model to understand and show where all of the costs are.
I’ve spoken with a lady who was using this as a way of generating income while looking after her pre-school children.

Obvious costs are ingredients, paper cases, cooking time, delivery fuel and the cost of running an oven. Less obvious were the costs she had either missed or was unable to factor in, such as the costs of her own time making deliveries, running a food mixer, additional wear and tear on her equipment and car and, crucially, additional time, hot water and materials for cleaning up. The last was missed because, in her head, the cleaning wasn’t associated with the making.

At this point I’m going to introduce a word that will probably send some of you to sleep:

Spreadsheets

I wasn’t a fan of them for a long time, because they just looked like boxes with meaningless numbers in them. Then I met someone who could create spreadsheets that had real meaning. They did things that I didn’t know could be done and enabled me to see exactly how shifting a cost up or down, just a little, could have a huge impact on profitability.

At first I thought they were a bit too detailed, because they included things that I would never consider worth counting, such as paper clips, staples and elastic bands. But at the time we were using thousands of these things every month and so they had more impact than I would have imagined.

By changing stationery supplier for some items I found that, even with the additional delivery costs, I was able to reduce expenditure and increase profitability. It was only by a small amount, perhaps as little as £75 per month, but it was the beginning of looking more closely at costs and the prices my business was charging for its services.

That’s why this month’s bonus includes a workbook in both MS Excel and Open Document formats. There are instructions and guidance on what each sheet is for, what it should contain and how to enter the data. There are colour-coded areas for data to be entered and other colour-coded areas that you should not touch unless you’re an experienced spreadsheet user. We could have locked all of the function areas down, but it may help some people to see what’s going on.

Another thing that spreadsheets opened my eyes to was the true cost of taking on additional staff.

If you operate in warehousing or customer fulfilment your new staff member may cost wages, protective gloves and a tape gun. In an office environment you may need to consider desk, chair, computer, software licences and even a move to a larger office. These costs are obvious once you start to think about them, but the arrival of a new member of staff often coincides with a drop in production from your existing team because the ‘new guy/girl’ asks a lot of questions. That’s a cost that no one considers until they’ve been in business for a while.

The numbers are really important and should never be viewed as boring. If you’re in business to make money, the numbers are the most important thing.

Micro Marketing Budgets

24th November 2016 By The ActionKnowHow Team

Micro Marketing Budgets

Marketing Methods and Budgets

Would you be surprised to hear that DFS (the furniture retailer) is one of the UK’s highest spenders on TV advertising? It’s difficult to find a commercial break on any channel that doesn’t feature the latest ad from the ‘always running a sale’ giant, so I suppose you wouldn’t be surprised at all.

What might surprise you is that it spends more than £90m per annum on mixed media marketing.

What could be the driver behind such a huge spend?

Well, turnover of £670m with EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of £86m in 2013 clearly shows that DFS have a formula that works. The fact that their product is constantly being put into your line of vision means that the tag line ‘think sofas, think DFS’ tends to stick with potential buyers.

With 97 stores across the UK and Ireland they also offer reasonable geographic accessibility to around 90% of their target market, making it easy for customers to buy from them.

DFS know exactly who their customers are and how to appeal to them. The cost of marketing is obviously an intelligent spend that consistently yields results.

Yes but what has DFS got to do with my business?

You may be wondering what this has to do with your business, where marketing budget is what might be left at the end of the month when all the rest has been paid, but the truth is that without marketing there are no sales. No sales means no budget for marketing or anything else. Sales are what drive your business and marketing drives the sales process. Its process driven for measurable and predictable results and often overlooked by small business owners who are often more invested in new ideas than selling the products and services from the ones they already have. 10% of all sales you do make into your marketing budget will drive results, the only thing that won’t is not spending anything.

Of course it’s also helpful if you have people at the end of the process that can sell, or at least place the customer into a ‘ready to buy’ frame of mind. This was undoubtedly another reason in the decline of Jessops, as its stores were staffed primarily with photography enthusiasts and not sales people. Since Peter Jones stepped in to ‘save’ the brand the company has opened more channels to buy, including telephone ordering and ‘buy online and collect in-store’. The latter will offer savvy salespeople with opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell complementary products and accessories.

If you’ve wasted time looking at more successful competitors and thinking ‘my stuff is better than theirs, how come I am not selling as much?’ it’s time to stop and focus your attention on what you haven’t been doing enough of – marketing. You can make a massive impact even with a micro budget and over the next month I will be looking at well under £100 marketing spend items to get you going.