Posts

Top 5 headaches among business owners

Image
We list some of the most common problems that business owners have 1. Working way too many hours It must surely be the most common problem among business owners. You are personally responsible for absolutely everything: running the business, executing business plans, winning new business but also answer the phone, sending emails, doing accounting, dealing with vendors, paperwork…  Either you don´t have anyone else to do the job, or you don´t trust anyone else to do it. And then the classical “if I don´t do it myself, it will not be done correctly”. It´s hard to delegate tasks to other. This problem is also connected to the fact that it is hard to find good employees. To really find that person that you can trust and that will work 110%, just like you. But the fact is that very seldom anyone will care as much about the company as you do. So even if the day had 48 hours it would not be enough. Business owners tend to work much more than 40 hours a week and this causes a lot of stress. It

Do you ever feel stuck?!

Image
That sensation of being stuck ... LTV speaks with company owners on a daily basis that feel this way. This does not mean that they are not successful (it can also mean this) but often it has to do with other things. Common feelings among company owners - I have so little time to see my family and when I do I am distant at best. - Hobbies - I wish! - I feel like I would like to get in better physical form but just do not have the time. When digging deeper in conversations with people the main driver for feeling stuck will be totally different for everyone. That said, there is almost always a disconnect with what we call the Dream Scenario, but let me come back to that in a second. The Dream Scenario When starting businesses we often have an idea in mind around how it will be. That idea develops over time depending on the age we are in the success we are having and loads of other factors impacting our lives. The main thing to remember though is that we will always always have a Dream Sce

Profitability level, post #2

Profitability level, post #2 Profits continued... If you did not read the first part of this post, you find it here In my last post I asked about profits and your view and I also asked your view on should we or should we not re-invest our profits into the business? This is of course not a simple one liner answer, but some thoughts below to bear in mind. 1. If profits are not growing something else is wrong. Often pricing, this is a whole huge topic in itself. In my view, and from experience, probably 80-90% (that number comes from speaking with owners, not an exact science), of company owners do not charge enough. 2. Putting almost all of our profits back into our busienss means that we can spend 20-years working on a busienss but have not built any real wealth. The busienss is supposed to do that, this is not a good place to be in and should immediately be rectified. 3. In addition to point two, when someone is selling their business, in their mind they then need to get enough money

Profitability level, post #1

Profitability level, post #1 Today I wanted to discuss briefly the so important profitability level of a company. In any discussion with a business owner this is of course a super important topic. So I will break this post up into several posts to make it easier to read. When discussing profit with company owners, I often get the answer when asking that the turn over is X, and I think that the profit is Y, roughly. Continuing to probe, I get, is that before or after tax, are you taking that as dividend or leaving it in the company I often get a reply that I do take dividends but I am not sure what the amount is, my accountant will tell me that. I often then also get the reply that while the Y level is the profit I am often re-investing all of that into the business, or I am re-investing most of that into the business. I am interested in your view on that as a reader. I know that it is very commonly stated that we should of course reinvest into the busienss because it helps us grow. The