One of the biggest challenges business builders have is to make your future credible to get credit for your future. That’s the challenge of growth, which makes your future bigger than your past.
Here’s a solution. Using the universal language of finance- dollars and cents- practice describing your company’s future based on its “Economic Building Blocks” to demonstrate how your financial projections predictably flow from your core expertise.
“Company W sustains less than .0001 defect rate delivering customized components in chasse-specific order to the right customer plant out of 4 nationwide; Company X delivers custom solutions in 1-3 days based on embedded software in its core product, while competitors take 3 weeks building to customer specifications; Company Y receives 15-20% price premiums based on its effective branding. Company Z’s in-house training insulates it from the industries double digit turnover rate by making new hires productive in 2 days.”
I began calling these Economic Building Blocks when I noticed companies had numerous components which make up their competitive economic distinction. What made each company unique was how it combined a number of insights about the needs of its market i.e. perhaps related to logistics, service, pricing methodology, packaging, after sale support, etc. After all, isn’t that why you went into business in the first place- to solve a problem differently? Like so many LEGO pieces, many children have access to the same set of blocks, but somehow each child builds a different creation. In today’s fast changing global market, you can create “new” building blocks that others don’t have, or add the building blocks of others (outsource, in-source etc) as your own. As you assemble a collection of bocks you imbue them with your own corporate personality.
Try it: describe your company uniquely without using your corporate name. This no-name discipline forces attention on your own Economic Building Blocks to describe your company’s uniqueness. As a business builder, Economic Building Blocks represent the distilled learning, reflected in your business model refined over your career and your years of experience, that lend credibility to your future and its financial projections.
If you want to get credit for your future, you need to make that future predicable to others. Just like in the stock market, predictability of future growth enhances the value of any stock. As you improve your skill in using the universal language of business, you’ll quickly discover how powerful this language is for more audiences than you might guess. Yes, it’s the language for raising capital from investors- family and friends, angles or venture capital. And more, customers and vendors love it too.
Stefania Aulicino is founder president of CapitalLInkUSA. For 20 years Stefania has helped business builders uncover the right capital for their optimum growth strategy so you get cash and keep control to build the business you really want. www.CapitalLinkUSA.com
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