Business Reloaded

Right now I’m in the middle of reading a great book by a friend of mine; Robert Copping: The Heart of Business Success – How to overcome the Catch-22s of growing your business  It is available from Amazon right here

In the book Robert explains that there are three key Catch-22s that collectively conspire against the entrepreneur and contribute to the high rate of business failure.  They are as follows:

The Entry Catch-22 – Achieving first base:

To grow to the first Stability Step requires funding – yet funding is only available to business that have already achieved the first Stability Step

The Growth Catch-22 – Balancing Growth:

Your level of funding dictates your growth gradient and hence your future earnings – yet it is future earnings that will define the level of funding worth investing.

The Exit Catch-22 – Financing ambition:

Your desired exit valuation requires a level of funding – yet the level of funding increases the exit valuation you require.

Robert states that in order to be successful you need to break into the circularity of these three Catch-22s and overcome them.  He then shows how this can be done through the implementation of a solid and professional business plan.

However, as many Excel experts will tell you, this isn’t something that can be done with spreadsheets – which are notoriously bad at circular arguments.  Spreadsheets models are also very prone to input errors and far too easy to break.  I know – I’ve broken a few! So, what does Robert suggest?

His answer is to use Sightpath.

The Sightpath Business Planning Service is far more effective than the ‘do it yourself’ option yet far more affordable than the alternative option of engaging a consultant.  As Robert mentions on the Sightpath website:

You tell us about your business (or your business idea) – i.e. your customers and your products or services and about your ambitions for the business.

We’ll model it using our unique business planning system to generate a business plan with a growth gradient that best suits your specific situation.

We use a 3-stage process for Business Planning:

1. Model it – Create a model of the business that links the 3 critical ‘C’s: Customers, Capacity and Cash. At this stage there is no scale to the plan.
2. Balance it – Balance the scale of your ambition and funding to specify a Strategic Objective(s) and generate a Growth Gradient
3. Sense check it – Check the plan makes sense compared with the scale of the market and conduct a Sensitivity Analysis.

Our system will calculate the maximum Cash Requirement to reach your ambitions and we’ll help you decide how best to cover it.

We will process all the numbers you need for your business plan – from Customers through to Cash flow. Our process works on marketing and finance as part of the same process.

Find out more:

I am really excited that Robert has agreed to let me licence the product from him so that, as an official Sightpath Business Catalyst, I can offer this service to my clients. If this is of interest to you – and if you have any type of business then it really should be – then you can find out a bit more by clicking here or simply get in touch by email or phone.