Like any owner who juggles the challenge of working “in” and “on” my business, I have to stay super-disciplined to ensure I don’t let “busyness” result in important checks, balances, planning and protections slipping off the radar.
Accordingly, I’m a huge fan of due diligence, lists and regular reviews in both my professional and personal life – and all the crossover areas. With time and experience, over the years I’ve learned the energy I put into “doing” and “dealing” is a fraction of that I could expend on the unproductive, and often risky, alternative: procrastination and playing catch-up.
I had a great session recently with a group of BizClubbers at one of our workshops tackling just these issues: Legal Planning for Life and Business. One of the reasons we’ve set up BizClub is to educate businesspeople and provide an accessible forum to help you all prevent problems before they occur. And that starts with knowing where you stand and what you need – and, you don’t know what you don’t know … until you find out. BizClub is here to help you find out in good time.
So, for those who missed out on the workshop, never fear, this is such an important area, we’ll be running it again for sure.
In the meantime, though, you can perform your own informal business health check by flicking through the following common considerations, based on the check list we worked on at the workshop. If any of the following increases your heart rate in any way, or you’re plain just unsure, please don’t leave it until we hold our next session. Remember, as a BizClub member, you have up to 30 minutes free each month with one of our team – so there aren’t any excuses for not taking the time to check out any questions or concerns you have.
First and foremost, how’s your business plan looking? If the answer is non-existent or stale, it’s time for a freshen up. Without a clearly spelled out vision, mission and goals, you’re signing up for the commercial equivalent of a wild goose chase.
No matter how long you’ve been in business, you can save yourself a lot of grief by checking your foundations with a professional adviser. It’s not uncommon for us to find clients operating under a structure that’s not in their best interests, and without business basics – for example, shareholder or partnership agreements – in place.
Remember, you’re not just looking at the next few months. Ideally, a robust business plan will also look much longer term – as in your ultimate exit. Succession planning is critical to structuring and running a business in line with how you want your business to serve you in the end.
Risk management is huge nowadays – and for good reason. Prevention is always better than the cure, so conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities) analysis, which should help throw up the key risks you face. Where you can’t remove the risk, you should be able to at least mitigate it. Risk management can include everything from ensuring you have the right insurances for people and property in place, to having up-to-date, legally sound contracts, such as employment agreements and terms of business. Health and safety is a constant focus for business – make sure you’re up with the play and have the right plans, systems and procedures at work. Again, if in doubt, check it out with us.
I’m a big fan of systemising. Rather than approach things willy nilly – and, yes, loads of businesses do it – work out the best way to do common activities in your workplace and template it. When you have staff, this helps not only ensure critical jobs are done, but that they’re done in line with your expectations … and the law.
Make sure, too, you have your financial planning sorted. Check out the guest column in this edition from Nigel Perkins, accountant and business adviser at Ashton Wheelans. You want sound budgets – including a process to regularly test your pricing – in place, as well as good systems around credit checks and controls.
For those of us in business, there’s usually a pretty big interplay between our personal and professional affairs. You need to be particularly aware of protecting what you have – and, as a business person, you could have more on the line than you realise. If you haven’t explored yet whether you need to put in place protective tools – which might include anything from a contracting out agreement to a trust – then you really need to put that on the priority list. A quick call to one of our team will set you straight on what asset protection you need to look at further to safeguard your hard-earned wealth now and in the future.
If you’ve never done it before, or it’s an area you’ve been neglecting, finally getting your business and personal affairs house in order tends to be very liberating. As part of the process, you should develop a customised checklist and review schedule, which provides the peace of mind knowing you’re across things as best as you can be, and that key considerations are diarised for regular revision, so won’t lapse and come back to bite you.