Manny Skevofilax

Manny Skevofilax is a consultant, speaker, and author who helps business owners maximize profits and overcome growth challenges to achieve financial freedom. An expert in strategic planning, financial statement analysis, and business operations, he's been achieving extraordinary outcomes for his clients since 2003. Prior to starting his consultancy, he was a vice president with Comerica Bank, a U.S.-based commercial lending institution. His new book is Ultimate Profit Management:  Maximizing Profitability as You Grow Your Business which was published by Taylor & Francis. Learn more at portalcfo.com. Manny can be reached at 410-808-3441 or via email at manny@portalcfo.com.

Improve Internal Processes with MOST Analysis

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most analysis

Improve Internal Processes with MOST Analysis

Your internal processes have a huge impact on your business’s success. Without efficient processes, it’s more difficult for businesses to meet goals, attract new customers, and gain more revenue. For this reason, we’re going to break down one of the most efficient ways to analyze your business’s internal processes using the MOST analysis technique. MOST stands for mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics. It is one of the best ways for businesses to effectively analyze the best business practices to achieve business goals.

1. Mission

A mission statement is very definitive of the business and therefore needs to be established early on. It communicates things such as the purpose of the organization, products and services, who your ideal customers are, and where you operate.

Essentially, a clear mission statement is important to the business’s foundation as it helps guide businesses in the right direction. When you know your business’s purpose and the direction it’s heading, you are better positioned for the future.

2. Objective

Tracking performance is vital to business sustainability. With that said, objectives serve as measurable steps to achieve goals and ensure your business is heading in the right direction.

Objectives communicate to businesses how they should allocate factors such as strengths and weaknesses. While goals are general, objectives are specific to how a business plans to achieve these goals. It’s important to note that objectives tend to remain the same unless circumstances change.

3. Strategies

Essentially, strategies are used to help achieve business objectives. They are the formation of goals and initiatives that are important to the business. Without effective strategies, business owners will find it difficult to sustain their position in the market. Having business strategies in place will save money, help businesses recognize strengths and weaknesses, and operate more efficiently moving forward.

4. Tactics

Simply put, tactics are micro-strategies. They are quick and actionable plans that support the overall business strategy. Tactics help businesses prioritize different milestones in order to carry out strategies more efficiently.

Additionally, tactics are more concrete and detailed than business strategies and they serve as a more specific means of action. With that said, tactics are more oriented towards smaller steps and a shorter time frame to help businesses meet goals.

Analyzing your business is integral to business growth and development. Ongoing business analysis helps business owners understand their business better, make vital decisions that impact the company, and successfully prepare for the future. For this reason, businesses should continuously analyze their current internal processes to have a deeper understanding of what their business currently has and what should be implemented in the future to strengthen their position in the market.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

Three Steps to A Business Growth Strategy Implementation

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rapid revenue growth

Most entrepreneurs have many plans on the table, and part of them is growing their operations. The only problem is that what you intend to achieve as a business operator is of no use if you do not act on the same. For that reason, a business growth strategy will only become useful after implementation when the process is a success.

The successful implementation of a business growth strategy demands the adoption of the right approach. Here are three steps that can help you achieve growth in your business operations.

1. Focus Your Team on One Goal

Handling several projects at once is a recipe for failure, and achieving growth, in this case, will also become a challenge. You should also note that your employees play a significant role in the achievement of set objectives and engaging them in productive activities will promote the expansion of your operations.

When you focus the attention of your staff members on one goal, they will channel all available resources towards this purpose, and that will yield a desirable outcome. Once your employees achieve a specific goal, you can direct their efforts towards what you wish to accomplish next, and as a result, you will experience growth in your business operations.

2. Consider Proper Scheduling of Different Activities

Maximizing the potential of your employees is critical if you want to expand your entity, and that is possible by scheduling their daily duties accordingly. Engaging your employees in involving tasks throughout the day without giving them time to rest or unwind will affect their productivity in one way or another.

Allowing your staff to take a break in between work refreshes them even as they prepare to resume their duties, which will result in increased productivity and growth.

3. Provide The Right Working Environment

Spring, summer, and winter are the characteristic seasons in every calendar year, which affect your firm’s activities in various ways. For instance, workers tend to be less productive in a hot summer afternoon, and that can slow down the growth of your firm. If you provide an enabling environment for your staff members by installing such facilities as air conditioners, changes in seasons will rarely affect their functionality in the office, and that can promote business growth.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

5 Methods to Enhance Your Value While You Grow Your Business

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enhance your value

Do you know what your value is to your client? You have to be able to quantify your value to every client in order to maximize business growth,  Can you do that at the moment? Determine the value you provide to your customers and then make sure to charge appropriately for it.

Knowing your value can be a tough question to answer and there can be wildly different answers for different industries. With products, you need “hard” pricing, no question. However, even products these days come with (highly profitable) insurance and warranties for the purchaser. (Think of “trip insurance” in these volatile times.)

The important things is that you figure this out as quickly as possible and make sure to charge appropriately. If you don’t, you risk leaving money on the table that you’ll never be able to get back. That’s money you could have used to fulfill your dreams.

Let’s take a look at 5 methods to enhance your value:

  1. Don’t underprice your products/services because you don’t have the confidence to ask for your value.
    You must get comfortable “asking for your value” in the same way that you got comfortable “asking for the business.” Setting fees and prices is a mental exercise. You have to see yourself as providing important, pragmatic, valuable products and services to others. You do have a history of providing that, but you probable haven’t bothered to categorize it or examine it. I am suggesting here that you formalize it so that you can give yourself the assurance that you deserve to charge well. So you have to believe in yourself to charge for your value. It’s as simple as that.
  2. As you make sales to similar size companies, start building your confidence and then dedicate a portion of your sales and marketing efforts to larger companies.
    Larger companies have larger budgets. Period. As you start to grow your business, start developing a plan to go up-market. This means that as you get better at being in tune with your customers’ wants and needs, start prospecting for larger companies. Closing larger sales to larger companies will not only make you more profits, it will give you a boost in confidence.
  3. Develop ways to increase the value of your existing products/services to your customers. 
    As you grow your business, you should focus on creating more value for your customers. More value will translate into more profits. Most customers know what they want, but they don’t always realize what they need. What people “want” is usually a commodity subject to price competition:  an airline seat, a refrigerator, their taxes completed, and so on. But when you introduce an unforeseen need, there is no longer price competition because the offer is now one of uniqueness. An airline ticket to Paris is one thing, but what is a curated, private tour of the Louvre worth? A pool pump and heater is one thing, but what if you could control them anywhere in the world from your smartphone? Your mission is to find other areas where your products and services can command higher value. As you can see, it’s not that difficult if you refuse to settle for the “same old, same old,” and don’t just respond to what the customer “wants.”
  4. Create new, higher-value products and services.
    Your existing customers are in the best position to tell you what additional needs they have and what else they would likely buy from you if you created it. All you need to do is ask them. However, they are likely to tell you what they need today, or even what the needed yesterday. You need to find out what they will probably need tomorrow!  So don’t simply ask what they need, ask what they think they’ll probably need in the near future. Keep in mind that even if you have a trusting relationship with your clients, they might not be willing to share certain business-related matters with you because they are embarrassed! Don’t take it personally.
  5. The six secrets to successful price increases.
    (a) Don’t beat around the bush about a price increase. (b) If you still can’t get comfortable talking to your existing clients about a price increase, then only raise prices for your new clients. (c) Insert an annual price increase sentence into your engagement letter and/or contract. (d) Be keenly aware of the timing of your price increase. (e) Never make your clients feel that they are getting less from you as you are increasing your price. (f) Never sit down at the negotiating table unless you’re willing to get up and walk away empty-handed.

Remember, running a business does not to be complicated. Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

How to Avoid the Top Growth Mistakes for Your Business

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top growth mistakes

Anyone growing a business is going to make mistakes. Despite the best planning, they still happen. But there are certain growth mistakes that I see happen far more often than they should. As a consultant who has worked with countless business owners to ensure their business sees the kind of growth that will sustain over time, I’ve gathered 8 of the most common and avoidable growth mistakes here.

Take a look at these mistakes and see if any ring true in your experience. Even if you’ve made them in the past, there’s no reason to continue making them now. Instead, learn how to identify them, course correct quickly, pivot to a better strategy, and learn new habits and skills that will set your business up for sustained success.

The 8 growth mistakes:

  1. Setting unreasonable growth goals.
    When you declare a growth goal of 20%, or 50%, that places an unreasonable burden on your business. It sets up a build/buy quandary when it comes to staffing, for one: Do you staff-up to meet elevated growth goals, or wait for the business and, if successful, run the risk of not being able to implement and fulfill because you’re scrambling to find staff with the right skills? Post-pandemic, this is a chronic problem. Another problem is the stress it puts on existing leadership and employees, and the ripple effect on stakeholders. You and your people can burn out from overwork and become highly stressed as goals remain on the distant horizon. You lose the credibility and faith of lenders, supporters, existing customers, and family.  Instead, avoid setting unreasonable growth goals by focusing on the things that you do in your business that need to be improved or replaced.
  2. Focusing on shiny new toys.
    Shiny new toy syndrome can seriously impede a leader’s focus. True story: I once worked for a corporation where everyone was in terror when the boss went to a workshop or seminar, because he would come back with the latest “new idea” and want to change everything already in place. This happened so often that productivity plummeted during all the reorganizations. Short-term goal hopping results in the unconscious abandonment of longer-term, strategic goals. Instead, play with the shiny object before you implement anything. If it breaks down, doesn’t do what was claimed, or makes your life worse, toss it before it tosses you.
  3. Not checking in on stated goals. 
    When a business leader doesn’t take at least a once-a-month pause to review progress towards stated goals, that can lead for some very unwelcome surprises. I’ve seen leaders opt for quarterly progress reviews, or even less. But those are woefully insufficient. By then, the issues are already well underway. There’s also no sense having goals unless you have the metrics in place to measure progress towards those goals. Instead, set up the measurements you need to gauge progress in a tangible way. You’ll get a good idea of business performance. If you want to keep to monthly reviews, set up quick reviews weekly (or even daily) as well. Those are the best way to avoid surprises.
  4. Hiring (and keeping) the wrong people for the job.
    If the pandemic and trends like quiet quitting and the Great Resignation have taught us anything, it’s that merely seeking and replacing “bodies” are woefully insufficient hiring strategies, and managing employees without clear requirements and outcomes can create friction and waste energy. Leaders that merely replace people aren’t considering what their own future needs are; leaders that have to micro-manage are spinning their wheels.Instead, provide your employees with a set of three clear outcomes you expect every month, obtain their commitment (or modifications), and then hold them to it. Every month. Be specific: “Take care of inventory” is meaningless, but “Keep inventory breakage to under 10 percent of total inventory” is very clear and measurable. In this way, you won’t have to micro-manage anyone. In terms of  resignations and turnover, view them as opportunities to seek talent that better matches your growth needs.
  5. Running excessive overhead.
    Nothing is as deadly for business growth (or even survival) as excessive debt, and nothing creates excessive debt as fast as payroll.  This is a huge dilemma for growing businesses because of the build staff/grow or grow/build staff “chicken and egg” phenomenon.Make an organization chart to give you a visual representation of your business. In addition to their names in the box, place the employee’s total compensation alongside. This exercise helps you to understand if you’re getting the return that you anticipated from that employee’s efforts.
  6. Lacking sufficient working capital (cash and/or financing).  
    One thing is certain: You know exactly how much your expenses are in any given month. But what you don’t know is how much revenue you will generate in any given month. If your overhead is too high, you can’t use your profits to keep growing your business — and you’ll be on the never-ending chase for finding more money. Instead, keep your overhead low enough that you can put the profits back into growth. Avoid the natural tendency to start spending money you don’t have.
  7. Not testing the market.
    It’s a fatal error to not test the market. Not talking to your customers about what their needs are means your business may not be aligned with their needs — and that alignment, and the quality goods and services you provide are as important for business growth as for having a successful business. There’s nothing worse than offering a product or service that customers aren’t interested in. Avoid this by staying in touch with customers through regularly scheduled phone calls and meetings that build on your ongoing relationship.
  8. Underpricing products or services.
    This is a simple mistake that’s made by so many business owners. Underpricing doesn’t just lead to lower margins. It drives a lower perception of value.Avoiding it is just as simple: learn how to get your value. Know what that value is, and don’t undercut it.

Growth doesn’t just happen. It requires repeating existing habits and applying existing skills to begin progress to exploit what you already have and acquire what you need. But the key to building a sustainable business is profitable growth, not just growth — and not  a high-growth, no-profit strategy, no matter how alluring it might seem.

Remember, running a business does not to be complicated. Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

Business Advice: Tips for Staying Motivated

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staying motivated

Staying motivated, especially when creating and selling online courses or coaching programs, can be challenging and incredibly rewarding. Here are some tailored tips to help keep your motivation high:

1. Set Clear Goals: Break down your big vision into achievable, clear goals. Knowing exactly what you’re working towards can help maintain your focus and motivation. For instance, aim to complete a specific module of your course by a certain date or acquire a set number of new clients within a month.

2. Celebrate Small Wins: Every step forward is progress, no matter how small. Celebrating these milestones can boost your morale and keep you motivated. Whether it’s completing a lesson plan or receiving positive feedback from a client, take a moment to appreciate your efforts.

3. Connect with Your Audience: Regularly engage with your audience through social media, email, or webinars. Understanding their challenges and successes can reignite your passion and remind you of the impact your work has on their lives.

4. Seek Inspiration: Stay inspired by following industry leaders in your niche. Their journeys, insights, and successes can motivate you to keep pushing forward. Additionally, consuming relevant content, such as books, podcasts, and articles, can provide fresh ideas and perspectives.

5. Maintain a Support Network: Surround yourself with people who understand and support your goals. This could be other content creators, mentors, or peers in your niche. Having a support network can provide encouragement, advice, and accountability.

6. Prioritize Self-Care: Burnout can quickly diminish motivation. Ensure you’re taking care of your physical and mental health by getting enough rest, exercising, and engaging in activities that relax and rejuvenate you.

7. Visualize Success: Regularly visualize achieving your goals. Imagine the satisfaction of helping your clients succeed in their endeavors. This mental practice can keep you focused and motivated.

8. Stay Flexible: Be open to adjusting your strategies and goals as you progress. The world is dynamic and staying flexible can help you navigate challenges more effectively, keeping frustration at bay.

9. Reflect on Your Journey: Take time to reflect on how far you’ve come. Remembering the challenges you’ve overcome and the progress you’ve made can be a powerful motivator to keep moving forward.

10. Keep Learning: Stay motivated by continuously learning new concepts, strategies, and tools that can enhance your courses and coaching programs. This not only benefits your clients, but also keeps you engaged and excited about your work.

Be aware that motivation ebbs and flows. It’s normal to have days when you feel less driven. The key is to acknowledge these feelings without letting them derail your progress. Keep pushing forward, and don’t hesitate to reach out for support when needed. Your dedication to helping others succeed is commendable and every step you take brings you closer to your goals.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Check out ways I can help you make more money at www.portalcfo.com.

The Value of Business Growth Planning

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Portal CFO Growth Planning Tips

Whether you’re just starting out or already have an established, profitable business in operation, business growth planning should be near the top of your priorities list. Every industry has unique challenges, but some common practices can position your business for future success. We’ve compiled four tips that will give you the most value out of your business planning and set you on a course for success.

Growth Planning Tips for Success:

1. Real Time Accounting

From the basics of Excel or QuickBooks, to more advanced custom accounting software solutions, every business has a way to track their financial position. Implementing a software system that delivers insights on your finances in real time can help you make strategic growth planning decisions and spend your limited capital where it will have the greatest impact.

2. Set Goals For Growth

You may be just getting started in a new market or launching a new product, but all businesses have aspects like revenue or cost savings they want to accelerate and measure. Setting growth planning goals and milestones and using them to track progress over time for your most important business activities makes the mission clear for employees and helps remind everyone what you’re striving towards.

3. Forecast For Tomorrow

Every business should use their existing data to develop strategies for what they can do better in the future. Building forecasts and models for costs of goods, profitability, or logistics expenses can help set expectations for capital requirements, and can often reveal inefficiencies or blind spots that can be addressed to make your business even better.

4. Talk To An Expert

Meeting with consultants is a great way to learn more about your industry, the major players and challenges, and how you can develop a growth planning strategy to win against the competition. If you’re working on a difficult project or seeking to maximize your return on investment, growth and planning consultants can set you on the right course for accelerated success and profits.

Growing your business can be as complicated as running it day to day, but the payoffs can take your operation to the next level. Take charge and use these tips to get a head start on growing your business today.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you build a clear path to achieve financial freedom at www.portalcfo.com.

Three Strategies That Can Bring Your Business Growth Plan to Life

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Business Growth Planning Tips

A business growth plan is only as good as its implementation. If you have an idea for growing your small business in writing, but have it gathering dust on your shelves, it’s not going to be of much use. A plan that includes ideas on how you can grow your operations will inspire you to act, so you can turn what is in writing into a reality. Here are three strategies that you can adopt as part of your business growth plan to bring your ideas to life.

1. Venturing into New Markets

There are many reasons why small business operators choose to extend their operations beyond the local market, including the pursuit of growth. Breaking into new markets can imply a lot of things such as opening a subsidiary in a different location, introducing a new product line after identifying a niche opportunity, offering services or products that complement what you are already selling, among other things.  Accessing new markets as a small business operator will expand your client base, and as a result, your enterprise will grow.

2. Growing Your Sales Through Existing Customers

The saying that “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” applies to small business owners as well. Loyal and existing customers can play an essential role in expanding your operations if you focus on them. Engaging your customers to discover the solutions you can offer for current problems and encouraging loyal customers to become your brand ambassadors are among the approaches that can help you grow your sales.  These approaches should be the cornerstone of your business growth plan.

3. Pursuing Potential Customers

The fact that there may be many individuals out there who have no idea about your existence implies that the opportunity for growing your small enterprise still exists. Conducting a market analysis will help you identify target clients, and you can follow that with an appropriate marketing campaign to capture the attention of such individuals.  Expanding your customer pool by targeting potential clients will ultimately promote the growth of your business.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more valuable articles to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Tips for Making Your Business Profitable

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Portal CFO Make Your Business More Profitable

Building a successful business is more of a marathon rather than a sprint. Succeeding in business today requires planning and organizational skills. Adapting to changes arising in the target market also plays a significant role in business success. Generating profits, as many entrepreneurs find out, requires investing more time and money in your business. Here are five tips on how you can make your business more profitable.

Organize Your Business

Completing various tasks and achieving your business goals requires good organization. Creating a to-do list daily for your business helps in completing pending tasks before assigning your staff new duties. Proper organization can also enhance the hiring process for employers seeking the right job applicants. Hiring the right candidates saves on resources, which increases profits.

Keep Detailed Records

Detailed records are necessary for every successful business. Keeping accurate records will give you insight into the financial position of your enterprise and the challenges it is facing. Finding a solution to problems facing your business is easier when you keep correct records.

Be Creative

Improving your business policies makes you stand out from the competition. Your business should adapt to changes in tastes and preferences of target customers. Implementing strategies that set your business apart from competitors will be profitable in the long run.

Prepare to Make Sacrifices

Hard work helps a business to scale. Putting more resources such as time and money in your business expands your operations, which in turn, should increase your profits.

Provide Exceptional Services

Offering excellent customer service plays a significant role in business success. You will enjoy repeat business from customers who feel satisfied with your services, and as an entrepreneur, you should have an understanding of your target customers to make money. When you meet or exceed the expectations of your clients, you will win their loyalty, which will improve the profitability of your business operations.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

How to Position Your Business for Growth

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rapid revenue growth

When the dream of owning a business becomes a reality, it brings a lot of joy, but it also poses a new challenge to the business owner — how to position your business for growth. In that case, an understanding of how you can expand your business will prepare you for what the future holds. Here are some tips on how you can position your business for growth.

Evaluate Your Company’s Current Position

As you analyze your company’s current operations, you will learn a lot of things regarding its future, and that is important if you are focusing on expansion. Some of the things you can consider to help you position your business for growth include the perception of customers towards your products or services, your cash flow, number of conversions within a specific duration, the number of one-time and repeat clients, among other things.

Accountability is critical as you verify the current positioning of your entity whether you have a board of directors to assess such a report or not. The reason is that accountability will help you establish whether you are on the path of growth or not.

Define Your Company’s Future

Once you establish the current position of your enterprise, it’s time to define where you want it to be in the future. Feedback from clients and your employees is instrumental in shaping your organization into what you want it to become. As you engage your employees, you will discover what they appreciate most about working with you and the changes you can consider making.

On the other hand, customers will share details on what they value most about your products or services and the improvements you should make. The information you gather from those who interact with your business will help you develop the right strategies that will spur the expansion of your operations.

Adopt The Right Strategies For You

A plan of action is necessary when you consider how to position your business for growth.  Compiling the details you gather about the current position of your firm, and the feedback from your employees and customers will provide the necessary insight for developing the ideal business growth strategy for your enterprise. Adopting the right business growth approach using the information at your disposal after assessing your operations will promote expansion.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

 

Business Advice: Tips to Avoid Burnout

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Portal CFO How to Avoid Burnout

It happens to the best of us: burnout. Of course it does. Getting your business off to a good start, keeping an eye on profits, employees, competition, inventory, can wear anyone out. It take a lot of time, energy, and focus. So how does one avoid burnout and stay consistent? In this post, we’ve compiled some of the most common sense tips to avoid burnout in your business

Tips to Avoid Burnout:

Take time off.

Many business owners work more than forty hours a week. They may start early in the morning and work late at night, squeezing in as much time to work as possible.

However, if you don’t want to experience burnout, you are going to need to take time off. If possible, don’t work every evening and weekend. Your body and mind needs time to unwind and relax, so you are ready to go back to work!

To do that, you should work set hours.

It is important that you set aside certain times for work and times to have off. You shouldn’t just try to work every free moment that you have. Then, once they are set, make sure that you follow them.

Spend quality time with your family.

Even though you are probably working on your business for your family, it is still important that you find time to spend with those that you love.

Spending time with your family can really help you relax and enjoy life. This is necessary to avoid burnout!

Burnout is real, and it can be disastrous to a business. Many businesses fail because their owners overdo it.  To avoid it, you need to make sure that you take time off every day.  You can’t work twenty-four hours a day. You also can’t work seven days a week. In order to be successful, it is important to set a schedule and stick to it!

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

See how I help business owners create a clear path to financial freedom at www.portalcfo.com.


Manny Skivoflax LinkedIn