Paul Simister's Business Coaching Blog

How I Can Help Your Business Make More Money

Hi, my name is Paul Simister. I am the business coach with the heart of a marketer and the mind of an accountant.

My particular speciality is helping businesses to differentiate themselves away from their competitors, so that they attract, convert and keep more customers and increase their profits.

I'm also interested in how to use my finance and marketing skills to help you to make more profit and cash in your business quickly.

How I Can Help You For Free

I write a specialist business strategy and differentiation blog at www.DifferentiateYourBusiness.co.uk

This blog you're currently visiting has more general marketing, business development and profit improvement ideas and tips for business owners and entrepreneurs.

There is a lot of content and these pages will help you to find what you're looking for:

• By business subject
• Specialist marketing topics
• By business expert
• Training products and services

I currently give away three free reports that people have said very nice things about. These will give you more idea about how I believe owner-manager businesses can be improved.

• The Six Steps Profit Formula
• The Profit Tipping Point
• Marketing Secrets For Small Businesses

How I Can Help You For $1 For The First 30 Days And A Bit More Each Month Afterwards

I was so impressed with the outstanding quality of the training in www.ProfitableGrowthStrategies.com that I paid money to buy a license to sell it.

There is a 30 day test drive for just $1 where the intention is to show you how to make enough changes in your marketing to generate an extra $10,000 of bottom line profit.

How quickly you get the extra profit will depend on when you start implementing the ideas and how much action you take.

How I Can Help You For Quite A Lot Of Money (But I Guarantee You Make Much More)

No one will say that personal one-to-one business coaching is cheap.

Not from someone who knows what they're doing.

The truth is, it's how much you make over and above the coaching fee that matters, not what you pay.

And I guarantee that you'll make a return on investment of at least 500% if I agree to work with you.

The only exception to that is if I'm working as your cash flow coach. Then I guarantee to help you to bring your finances under control. I am committed to being part of the solution and not part of the problem.

The bad news is that I only work with business owners based in the UK unless there are exceptional reasons) and I am rather picky.

For me to have a viable business providing such a guarantee, I have to make sure that there really is a big opportunity for extra profit in your business. I also need to believe that you and I are compatible in our working styles and in particular in the way we naturally solve problems.

If that sounds daunting, don't worry.

The first coaching test drive or consultation is always free and I aim to leave you in a much better position than before we talk.

Either:

• You will be much clearer in your problem and how it can be solved: or
• I will help you to find an extra £5,000 profit in your business in our first free call.

If that sounds good to you please email me at paul@plancs.co.uk

Why Buying Email Lists Suck But May Pay-Off

Every day I get irritated when I am spammed by some business sending me an email when I never opted in to their list.

To my knowledge, I have never opted-in to any list that didn't have a "we won't sell your details" promise although I guess I may have done if the bait was strong enough.

Buying Email Lists Suck

The 15 Profit Rules by George Cloutier

I have recently read the book "Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing" by George Cloutier with Samantha Marshall and reviewed it on my Business Books Blog.

In the review I said the basis message for business owners is "to grow a pair, man up and take control of the profitability of your business."

It's not a nice, gentle book that says you will have a profitable business because the law of attraction will say you deserve it. Just the opposite.

I think any business owner who is struggling needs to read it and make their own minds up about what they will and won't do.

The 15 Profit Rules by George Cloutier

Contribution Margin Is The Real Income Of A Business

I first wrote about break even analysis and the cost volume profit relationship in 2008 and I've written several time about it recently and I've realised that I've never taken a deep look at the contribution margin.

What Is The Contribution Margin?

Contribution is the difference between the sales price received from the customer and the variable costs of buying, making and delivering the product or service.

Small Business Turnaround Coaching - Helping SMEs Back From The Brink

Some business coaches love working with successful business owners and get a great buzz from helping them to become more successful, turning them from millionaires into multi-millionaires.

Other business coaches, including me, get much more satisfaction from helping struggling business owners to turn around their businesses when they are not performing well.

The financial rewards aren't as good but I get more satisfaction from making a big difference to people's businesses and lives.

Small Business Turnaround Coaching

In this article I am going to look at how feasible it is for owner-managers to work with a turnaround coach to put their businesses back into the black and to create a long term profitable business.

I'll look at:

• Whether your business is already insolvent?
• The role of a turnaround manager.
• The compromises involved with hiring a business turnaround coach.
• Whether your business can be turned around.
• The turnaround priorities.

Is Your Business Already Insolvent?

Intentional Business Planning & Gap Analysis

How intentional are you in the planning and managing of your business?

I see a number of different approaches taken to business planning by business owners:

• Many don't plan. They operate their business on a day to day basis and struggle. There is some truth in the saying "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."
• Some prepare financial plans because their banks require them to do it to either get a new bank loan or to continue to support their bank overdraft. However this is just a numbers exercise to keep the bank manager quiet and there is little intention of commitment to implement the plan. perhaps there is the misguided hope that because financial success is in the forecast, it will happen.
• Some think about what they want to do in the business and put together a profit forecast and cash flow forecast to give them a budget to monitor and assess their progress against.
• A few use a better, more productive way to think about their business.

Intentional Business Planning

How To Target Your Ideal Sales Value

I introduced the idea of the Ideal Profit Formula in How To Target Your Ideal Profit based on the formula for calculating break even points.

This calculates a sales revenue value or volume that, based on the accuracy of the underlying assumptions, gives you an idea of what's needed to give you the profit you want.

In this article, we'll dig deeper into what the sales revenue value means in practical terms.

The Three Ways To Grow A Business

One of the best known ways to look at business growth is the Three Ways To Grow A Business Model .

How Much Should You Pay Yourself As The Business Owner?

One of the nice things about being a business owner is that, as your own boss, you'll never need to ask for a pay rise.

You'll have to answer the question..

How Much Should I Pay Myself As The Business Owner?

You will have conflicting feelings as you wear both the hats of the employee and the employer.

As the employee, the salary and benefits package you receive will determine your standard of living.

Benefits include things that you could buy as a private individual but the business pays on your behalf. In the UK this includes costs like company cars and medical insurance.

As the employer, you'll be aware that there are many other calls on the money a business has at its disposal:

• Your staff want to be paid more.
• Your suppliers want to be paid faster and they want higher prices.
• Your customers want you to reduce prices and add more free services or better service.
• And of course, the taxman will want his fair share.

Competitive Benchmarking - What If A Competitor Was Performing Better Than You?

This article has been extracted from How Much Should An Entrepreneur Or Small Business Owner Earn?

The best way to look at business in terms of likely potential for extra sales, profit and growth would be to be able to compare your key performance measures to your main competitors.

This is a process called competitive benchmarking.

What Does An Entrepreneur Bring To A Business?

This article has been extracted from How Much Should An Entrepreneur Or Small Business Owner Earn?

Every business is different but there are at least five essential components to entrepreneurship:

1. Ideas - a clear vision of the future and ideas for turning the dream into reality
    
2. Management skills - the ideas need to be implemented effectively and efficiently
    
3. Time and commitment - the focused time the entrepreneur is prepared to invest in the business.
    
4. Money - it often requires an initial investment to build a business to a level where it can generate cash on an ongoing basis and the entrepreneur needs to be able to provide or raise the cash. Other tangible assets might also be used to support a business like a property.
    
5. Relationships and reputation

How To Target Your Ideal Profit - The Ideal Profit Formula

I will introduce you to a way to target your ideal profit based on the break even point formula.

Too often a business owner will have an ideal profit in mind but won't have worked back from that goal to understand what size and type of business will generate that kind of profit.

I believe you need to be using intentional business planning.

The Break Even Point Formula

The break even point is the position where a business neither makes a profit of loss in a period.