Lately I have been working with a couple of people and realized a big problem in small business. The owners don’t have an “Aim Point”. In my book, So Now What?, I talked about the scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice asks the Cheshire cat which way to go. It seems with the new economic problems more and more people are losing their direction. Maybe they were going in the wrong direction in the first place. Do you know where you are going?
One of the things I included in my book, which you can now get on the kindle for just $2.99 by the way, was worksheets. I put the worksheets in there to get people thinking about their direction in life. Since the book came out I have had the opportunity to talk with several people in person who read the book. Many didn’t even do the worksheets, and guess what? They didn’t make any headway in finding a direction.
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| Sunset Tow Lead by a KC-10 |
As a competitive marksman in the military I was always shooting targets. Some big, some small, some close and some far. One of the tricks is to not look at the target, but to focus on the front site of the weapon. This made the target a little blurry, but it also got the shot much closer to the center.
When I became a pilot in the military we had targets too. We called them “aim points”. When I planned a mission to fly from Northern California to some runway half way around the world, I couldn’t yet see the aim point, but I had a direction to go. Only when I could see the destination did the aim point become clear. In order to put 100,000 pounds of metal moving over 120 miles per hour safely on the ground you had to pick an aim point on the runway. While you don’t always land on the aim point, you can get quite close.
Think about it, with a little planning and practice, a group of people can move hundreds of tons of metal and machine half way around the world and put it on a piece on concrete 150 feet wide and a mile or so long. So why is it so hard to grow a business?
Growing a business has the same rules and the same problems. First you need a direction. If you own a small business, you absolutely positively must pick a specialty. Something that separates you from what others would call your competitors. You can grow into other areas over time, but at first you really need to have a direction, and as you begin to grow the business, you need an aim point.
Why? Well let me give you an example, two real examples that came from one of my businesses.
I owned a residential systems business, in generic terms I sold home theaters. We decided to become authorized for one of the big Satellite companies so their guys would not mess with our gear. Since we only installed two or three systems a month, adding satellite services meant that we only sold two or three satellite installations a month if we sold 100%. We did about 70%.
We also decided that since our automation systems and remotes for the theaters had home security functions built in we should do this too. Again we only were installing one or two a month.
Another guy just down the road started a business installing satellites, and right next door to us in one of our buildings was an alarm company.
Two years into the program what do you think happened? Well, it turned out that our direction of installing home theaters was spot on, but selecting the multiple aim points didn’t work. The home theater business lost money on every satellite and alarm installation it performed. The profits from the home theaters were subsidizing the alarm and satellite business.
Eventually we flipped and made a deal with the satellite and alarm companies and returned to what we did best. It turned out both of them were making more money, doing less work and doing it with fewer employees. We never go good enough to install the satellites or alarms anywhere near as fast as they could. The alarm company later attempted to add some home audio installations, and sure enough within months, stopped.
The right way to do this is to grow each business as a separate business. Let the home theater guys be the best they can. When you have enough money, hire alarm guys and let them become the best alarm guys. The same process works for satellite.
It doesn’t matter if you have a small restaurant or small gas station. All of the rules apply the same. Just like one airplane can only fly to one airport at a time successfully, your business can only go one direction at a time. As you grow it is like buying more airplanes. Only then can you go more places and hit more aim points.
Find a direction, hit your aim point and don’t ever look back.
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