Do This In Your Business Or Suffer The Consequences

This past fall we bought a new house in Gallatin.

This is our fourth house (and last) we have bought since we’ve been married, and all have been fixer-uppers because raising three kids and working full-time just wasn’t stressful enough.

This house was the epitome of a needle in a haystack.  

The market was hot, the house was in the best location, and it had great “bones”.  

And if you don’t know, great “bones” means it’s a good house, but’s also a hot mess right now.

After about a month straight of rehabbing, the house was ready to move in.  

All it needed was carpet, paint, refinish the floors, windows, appliances, countertops, tons of new fixtures, woodwork, gutters, etc.  

You know, basically everything.

We still managed to stay on budget and walk in with enough equity to make it worthwhile.

This is what happens when you don’t reinvest in your home.  

You end up selling it at a below appraisal price in a hot real estate market.

It’s pretty easy to understand when it’s a house.  

You can see the windows falling out and the gutters hanging by a thread.

It’s harder to see with your business.

But you know what…I see it all the time.

• The website is out of date.

• Your bookkeeping is 6 months behind.

• The equipment is in constant need of repair. 

• Employees are kind of doing their own thing.

• You are putting out fires instead of working “on” your business.

• The CRM you bought to keep up with all of your contacts has never been installed.

You get the idea.

It’s just like this house we bought.  

The previous owners got busy with life and never really got around to the house maintenance.  

And in your case, you get busy with the day-to-day grind and really don’t have the time to reinvest in your business.

However, this becomes a big problem if you want to sell the business or just regain your sanity.

The key is to treat the REINVESTMENT in your business the same way you would reinvest in your home.

1. Schedule time for regular updates to your business and don’t let anything interrupt it, the same as you would not let anything interrupt you getting a plumbing leak fixed.
2. Take stock of your business today and look at every area that needs to be updated.
3. Then make a list, prioritize it, assign a budget for time and money, then figure out who’s gonna do it.

Yeah, I know all of this is easier said than done, but that’s owning a business.  

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

And if you decide you are just too busy to do this, you may end up with a nice little business with great “bones” that someone else buys for below market value.

Honestly, What Do You Really Do?

I worked for SERVPRO in their corporate office from 2002-2007 because it’s some sort of requirement for Sumner County residents…or at least that’s what they told me when I moved here years ago. 

Anyway, if you are not familiar, SERVPRO is the number one cleaning and restoration company in the U.S.  

At the time I worked there, they were number one, but most people didn’t know who they were.

If you mentioned SERVPRO to somebody they would ask if they made surfboards.

SERPVRO hired The Buntin Group, an advertising agency, to do some marketing research and development to fix that.

After several months of surveys, phone calls, and riding around on the truck, they came up with this:

SERVPRO

Fire & Water - Cleanup & Restoration

“Like it never even happened®”

Really.  That’s it.

At first a lot of the franchises were less than thrilled.

They said, “But we do mold remediation, contents cleaning, pack out inventorying, drapery cleaning, carpet cleaning, and 20 other things.  How will the customer ever know about those?!”

And those franchises had a point.  If you looked at a brochure back then, you would see 20 different related services on it.

However, the corporate office stuck to their guns.

And the result is SERVPRO is almost a household name at this point.

They created an identity that was easy to understand because they decided to only tell potential customers about their 2 primary services and not all 20.

When you tell somebody 20 things, they seem to remember 0.

If you are really clear and tell them 1-2, and do it consistently, how many do you think they will remember? 

If you said 1-2, you are correctamundo!  If you said anything else, you can go back to coloringJ.

Anytime I ask a business owner what they do, I almost always get the same response.

They list every product or service under the sun that they provide and even list several things they could do, but haven’t actually done before.

And I get it.  You don’t want to leave any money on the table and only marketing a couple of your products or services is scary.

I always recommend to my clients that they either focus on their 1-2 highest revenue items or the 1-2 they would like to be known for and do more of that. 

It’s scary, but simple, and best of all…it works!

If a $1 Billion company in Gallatin can do it, so can you.