Slimming Your Business Down
We’ve got an obsession with losing weight, haven’t we? Well – not yourself and ourselves personally, but society as a whole! It is always lose this, lose that, trim this, trim that, don’t eat that, eat this. Society wants to get slimmer, it wants to cut down, it wants to be healthy. It can be! Go for it. These type of lessons when done right are a force for good and not something to be mocked – the world is obsessed with slimming down, but isn’t that, right? Wouldn’t people want to look, and feel at their best?
The same, funnily enough, goes for business. Obviously, a business cannot just go about getting on a treadmill, but it can certainly shed a few pounds? How does it go about that? How do we determine an overweight business? Well – put it this way. A business that is ‘overweight’ will be operating beyond its means. This can be fatal. It will be spending too much, doing too much and generally be in excess and running at losses. A slimmer business? It will be sustainable and efficient. It will ensure that the costs of running the business are met by income.
Can a business lose weight then? Well – if we deem an ‘overweight’ business to be one that is running well beyond its means, then yes, yes we can see a business trim down. It won’t be physical weight that is lost though, the business will just need to see itself become sustainable and operate based on what money it makes. You see, when a business spends more than it makes, it will operate at a loss – but by slimming down operations, it can save costs and operate sustainably by either breaking even or making some sort of a profit.
How does a business go about slimming down? Well – in the first instance it needs to see where it is going wrong! Is it gorging itself to death on payroll? Is it spending too much on supplies and logistics? Identifying areas of excess in a business will always be the first step in trimming back a business and getting it a bit more in shape. To get this information, you need to get your hands on one thing – your budget. The budget of a business shows exactly what is being spent, and what a business wants to spend. The higher areas of spending on the budget are key, as these might be the areas that need to be cropped and reigned in. High operational costs can be reigned in easily – if you’re spending too much, save money with sites like DontPayFull.com, if you have too much staff, you’ll need to cut back on employment or wages. The budget tells you all!
Businesses cannot afford to operate beyond their means, or they will not last long at all! That’s common sense, but too many owners lack it. Will you be different and try to run a sustainable business? Or will you consign your idea and dream to the scrapheap?
