Strategy
Choosing the work you want and the customers you want it from, and why the choice of customers decides most of the profit.
Score your business
Eighteen questions, taking about ten minutes, show which of the six areas is holding the business back.
- Free, and your scores come by email
- A score for every area, and for each of the three freedoms
- Score again in three months to see what has changed
Accreditations & Partnerships
The six areas scored
Numbers
Whether decisions are made on figures, and the 21-month gap most owners make decisions across without realising.
Customers
How depending on one large customer weakens your position in every price negotiation.
Delivery
Why hiring people can limit how far the business grows.
Systems
Whether someone else could run the business for a fortnight, and why that matters even when the profit is the same.
Team
Whether people bring you problems or decisions, and what decides which.
Your results
You get a score out of nine for each of the six areas, a score out of twenty-seven for each of the three freedoms, and your overall score out of 54. Every area comes with what will improve it and how you will know it is working.
It arrives by email so you have it to work from, and you can score again in three months to see what has changed.
What your score means
- 0–18You own a job
This is common, and it is the easiest position to improve, because little has been built that would have to be undone.
- 19–36A business in parts
Some of the business runs without you and some of it still depends on you.
- 37–48Mostly a business
The business would survive you being away and has a value to a buyer. Name the remaining gaps and work on them.
- 49–54This is a business
The business runs without you. Check that it also pays you properly.
Andy Jackson
I’ve worked with business owners for years, and it’s nearly always the same story. Somebody sets up on their own, works harder than they ever did for anybody else, and five years on they’ve built something that can’t run for a fortnight without them, even when the accounts look fine.
That’s what the report is about. It came out of a book I wrote called Business 2.0, and it’s the same six things I go through with owners when we coach them.
We’re Buzz Accounting. We took over J A McClements & Co on the Fenaghy Road in Ballymena.