3 ways to instantly improve your business
These are the three things that you can implement straight away that will have a huge positive impact on your business. I call them ‘universal quick wins’ and they are often the first things I look at when I’m coaching a business owners.
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When we’re doing 121 coaching with our Vegan Business Tribe members, these are the three actionable things that we often focus on in the first session. They are what I like to call ‘universal quick wins’ – the things that that I know, after the call, that person can go and implement almost right away that will have a huge positive impact on their business. Let’s jump straight in!
1. Put your prices up
I guarantee that you are undercharging for what you do or make. You probably already know that but don’t have the confidence to put your prices up. You might argue that we’re in a cost of living crisis, or that the people you sell to just don’t have any money for you to charge more, or that you haven’t got enough experience or the brand to sell at a higher price – and I get all that. People say that you’re too expensive so you drop your prices to get around that objection. But having a low price is the ‘lazy sales’ approach because from experience, if someone says you are too expensive then one of two things is happening: 1. you’re selling to the wrong people or 2. you are not successfully getting across the value the customer will get from what you sell.
There’s a saying: “boutique does not come at budget”. So if you’re selling something which is bespoke and specialist then you can’t sell that with a low price tag, it’s just never going to work long term. You either have to find a way to connect with the types of customers who value and can afford your bespoke and specialist product or service, or you have to change what you sell to match your customers’ budget – for example coming up with a standardised product or service that you can sustainably sell at a lower price.
You might be better just having a handful of customers, each paying several times as much as your current customers, rather than having lots of customers paying a lower price. There is a customer for every price point and I guarantee you that there are companies out there charging two, three, maybe even TEN times as much as you do for delivering pretty much the same thing. Find them, study them, and you might find that the only difference between what you do and what they do is the price they charge. Remember: you can lose as many customers as you gain with a low price, because many will just assume that cheap equals low quality.
But I get it. It takes a lot of confidence to put your prices up. But most companies can put their prices up by 10% without losing a single customer, and that 10% increase in revenue can make a huge difference to your profit margins.
So I’m going to share a simple exercise that you can do to help you put your prices up: no matter what you do as a business, if you make a product or if you sell a service, every time you get a successful sale, put your price up by 10% for the next one. Continue to do this until you find the ‘pricing ceiling’, the maximum amount people will pay for what you do. You might find that you never actually find that pricing ceiling, and in twelve month’s time you might be charging twice as much as you do now.
From experience, two more things will happen when you successfully start increasing your prices. First, because people are happily paying more, you will became a lot more confident in what you are selling having value. Second, you might find that the kind of customers you are selling to changes as a result. By pricing higher, even incrementally, just 10% at a time, you might find you start winning work from customers who were expecting to pay more. The types of customers who are just looking for someone who can solve their problem, and the price of the solution is secondary.
And if you’re still going to argue with me about putting your prices up – well have you noticed that everyone else’s prices have gone up too? Your electricity bill has probably gone up this year, your staff wages might have gone up, the cost of your materials has definitely gone up, what you are having to pay other suppliers have all gone up. You’re not supposed to just swallow those prices yourself you know?!
Do you think that if the price of a product that Tesco or Walmart pays a supplier goes up, that those supermarkets just think ‘oh well’ and leave the retail prices as they were? No, they just pass that price on to the customer. That’s how business works. So you need to get in the habit of doing that yourself.
There is a customer for every price point and I guarantee you that there are companies out there charging two, three, maybe even TEN times as much as you do for delivering pretty much the same thing.
2. Buy back your time
You will have heard lots of ‘productivity’ tips and ways to get more disciplined with your time, but the real change in your business comes when you start to put a value on your time as the founder or key person in that business.
‘Lack of time’ is often the reason people give for struggling to move their business forward. They think that people who are successful don’t have a family that needs looking after, don’t have all the commitments that you have, or they have have a huge team who do all the work for them. And they might have that team now, but it’s not how they started out – they built their business and career using the same 24 hours a day that you have, they just valued their time differently to how you valued yours.
So the first thing to do is to get in to that same mindset: your time has a price attached to it.
So if you charge, for example, £100 an hour for your time, why would you spend half a day doing something that you could pay someone else to do at half the cost, probably in half the time and that they probably enjoy doing more than you do? And when working on these tasks are stopping you doing the really important things you need to do to develop the business. So your accounts, your social media posts, your email marketing, even making your product or delivering your service – there are other people out there that can do these things instead of you so that you can spend your time focussing on the things that, truely, only you can do in your business.
And if you say: “yeah, but someone else won’t do this thing as good as me!” well that’s your problem you control freak!
Imagine a business where the founder starts out by saying that they are going to build this big successful company, but they are going to do everything in that business themselves. They are going to make the product themselves, they are going to deliver the service themselves, they are going to do the sales and marketing themselves, they are going to respond to every customer email that comes in themselves, because no-one will be able to do it as well as they can. What do you think the chances are of that company growing? Would you invest in that business? And if the company found itself struggling, could you quickly identify why that business wasn’t growing?! Exactly. If your response to the idea of other people doing tasks in your business (so that you can concentrate on moving the business forwards) is: “but they can’t do it as good as I can” then YOU are the thing that is stopping your business moving forwards.
Letting go and getting other people do the tasks in the business that you are either over- or under-qualified to do is really important. It’s not that they won’t do those tasks as good as you do them, they just won’t do them in the same way that you do them. And that’s fine. If you can find someone to do a task to two-thirds of your standard, then that’s perfect. Because it means the job is getting done, it’s removed from your to-do list and you can spend your time elsewhere.
Now… understand that this is going to be painful. Trust me, the first VA you find, the first social media manager, the first video editor, or the first person you bring in to deliver services on your behalf, they probably won’t be the right person. They might even be a complete disaster that sends you scuttling back to wanting to do everything yourself, but don’t let them. Ask for recommendations from people you trust, start off with test projects first and be ready to kiss a few frogs before you find your outsourcing prince!
And yes, it does mean you have to spend money. But this is the ‘buy back cycle’. The time you free up by getting someone else to take a task off your hands, you then ‘re-spend’ on the things that are going to make your business grow. At the start you might not have much of a budget, so find that one thing that’s really going to make a difference and start there. Is it getting someone else to produce your social content or is it actually finding someone else to make your product or deliver your service for you so that you can concentrate on making sales?
If you can find someone to do a task to two-thirds of your standard, then that's perfect. Because it means the job is getting done, it's removed from your to-do list and you can spend your time elsewhere.
3. Find mentors
One of the first things I ask when coaching someone is: ‘who do we need to get to know?’. So many successful business people I know, in part, attribute that success to someone else – someone they met, someone who opened a door for them, someone who mentored them or even just gave them a great piece of advice that made everything fall into place.
In business, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If you have a problem in your company then other people will have already worked out how to overcome that problem. If you don’t know how to break into a marketplace, or how to launch a membership, or how to build a YouTube following, there are other people who have already done it and can show you how. If you are struggling to do anything in your business, go find someone who’s already done it and ask them for half an hour of their time.
If you spend even just thirty-minutes with someone who’s already walked the path you are on, they will be able to show you the shortcuts and warn you about dead-ends and pitfalls. And the great thing is, if you can find someone who shares your vegan goals and ethics, then there’s a chance they’ll respond to you when no-one else can get through to them.
So find the people in your industry who have already done what you are trying to do and see if they’ll engage with you. Go to the events they go to, work out how to get in the same room as them so that you can start a conversation. Spend some time researching who can give you a leg up in your industry, the people who can give you some really valuable advice or just motivation. Then once you’ve identified those people, work out how to get into a conversation with them.
Or seek out a formal mentor – find someone who you connect with that’s got the relevant experience so they can both coach you and hold you accountable. That’s why we offer 121 coaching as a bolt-on for Vegan Business Tribe members, because there is a section of our membership who are really pushing their businesses at the moment and see the value in being able to jump on a call when they need to make a decision, or to have someone looking over their shoulder who’s built their own businesses.
Seaking the mentorship of others genuinely moves you ahead so much quicker than just trying to work it all out yourself. I mean, if you were going to build a house, would you just head out with a few planks of wood and a wheelbarrow and think you’ll just work it out as you go along? Or would you maybe seek the advice from your neighbour who’s already built their own house and is happy to show you how they did it?!
A bullet point recap of what we’ve covered in this article:
- Put your prices up. Boutique does not come at budget. If you are selling something which is bespoke and specialist then you can’t sell that with a low price tag. So start by just putting 10% on your prices, and then every time you win a new customer, put another 10% on your next quote to find where your pricing ceiling is. You might end up selling to a completely different marketplace, because you will undoubtedly lose as many customers as you gain with a low price – many will just assume that cheap equals low quality.
- Buy back your time. I get it, you think that no-one will be able to do what you to to your standard, and that’s fine. If you can pay someone to take over a task that is stopping you spending your time elsewhere, and they can do that task to two-thirds of your standard, then that’s great. The job is getting done and it’s taken off your plate so you can concentrate on the thing that’s more worth your time. And be open to what those tasks may be that you need to pass on – it might be the admin stuff you hate doing, but it could also be making your product or delivering the service on your behalf if that’s what’s going to free up your time to grow the business.
- Find mentors. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Let others show you the shortcuts and warn you of the pitfalls. Find out how to get in the same room as these people. What events are they going to be at, or who can introduce you to them? And if you can find someone who’s done what you are trying to do and are also vegan, then there’s a big chance you’ll get through to them when others can’t. Or consider actually taking on a mentor, someone who’s got the experience but will also hold you accountable through regular meetings and sessions.
