“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” Warren Buffett
Time to Invest in Your Business: How?
Right now the market is pretty strong, and when markets are strong, business looks good. In fact, the economy’s current expansion is set to become the longest in US history. “ ‘Spectacular’ is the only way to describe this jobs report,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Loyola Marymount University and SS Economics. “It is hard to believe that this 10-year-old recovery keeps pumping out home runs.”
Perhaps you are not worried about an economic shift. But since the 1960s previous strong runs were followed by adjustments—that is the nature of the economic cycle and it is reasonable there is another one in the not too distant future. What happens when the tide goes out and we have under-resourced or neglected some important business investments? We are caught skinny dipping and we pay the price. Now is the time we should be investing in business growth—whether you think the growth will continue or not. On the upside, investing now will bring more growth. On the downside, investing now will stem losses and help stabilize your business even if we face a downturn.
Where to invest? Start with making sure you have defined a scalable growth vision for the organization. Define what is possible for your organization to achieve in light of its market advantages and changing customer needs. Once you have a clear line of sight to that, reverse engineering from there back to where you are today will help you prioritize the things that really make a difference vs. investments in housekeeping activities. Shoot for 2x growth, not 2% and chances are, with that kind of thinking you will exceed your expectations and certainly change the recent trajectory of revenue growth.
Need help knowing what questions to ask? Happy to help! Contact me at mreynolds@breakthroughmaster.com