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Success Advice

To Take Your Startup From $0 to $1 Million, You Have to Get This Right

your business needs to work at the smallest unit level possible before you even think about scaling

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how to build a successful business

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, small businesses make up 99.9 percent of the businesses in America. That’s impressive. What isn’t impressive, though, is that only 7 percent of them reach $1 million in revenue.

As disheartening as that statistic might be, there’s really only one reason why 93 percent of small businesses never reach the million-dollar mark. In almost every instance, the reason a small business struggles is that the entrepreneur or small business owner fails to get their unit-level economics right. (This term refers to your specific business’s revenues and costs as they relate to an individual unit.) 

What does that mean for you as an entrepreneur and would-be empire builder? If you want to build a billion-dollar business—and ultimately, an empire—first you have to build the perfect million-dollar business. No, scratch that: first you have to build the perfect hundred-thousand-dollar business. In other words, your business needs to work at the smallest unit level possible before you even think about scaling.

Get It Right Small

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard entrepreneurs say, “I’ll figure out how to be profitable once I’m bigger.” That’s the mindset that gets small business owners into trouble. Get it right small—or walk away early, before you waste valuable time, money, and effort on a losing proposition.

If you aren’t sure how to do that, don’t worry. We’re going to walk through how to check your unit-level economics right now. For the purposes of example, we’ll use a landscape maintenance company, but the concept holds true for every kind of business in every kind of industry and every geographic market.

The first step to getting your unit-level economics right is to identify what they are. In our mythical landscape maintenance business, the unit-level economics—based on some lightly researched numbers—are the monthly payment, fuel costs, insurance costs, and maintenance reserves for one truck ($1,400), one fully burdened (includes wages and benefits) two-person crew ($8,736), and the operating costs of the equipment necessary to maintain your customers’ lawns: a commercial lawn mower, a blower, a weed whacker, some rakes, shovels, and so on ($400).

Build Your Mathematical Formula for Success

Now that we’ve identified those, we can build a mathematical formula for success. This formula is specifically focused on revenue and direct operating costs; it does not include capital expenditures or Sales and General Administration (SG&A) costs—you’ll factor those in later.

Add these numbers up, and you get your unit-level direct operating expenses: $10,536/month, or $126,432/year. Now, you need to ask yourself a question: Can I bring in enough revenue to cover my direct operating expenses while leaving enough gross profit to cover overhead and generate the minimum acceptable net profit?

Again, let’s use some lightly researched numbers to explore how you can find the answer to that question. For illustrative purposes and simplicity, this example assumes a warm climate where lawns are cut throughout the year. A typical crew can cut 15 lawns per day, at $50 per cut. Assuming an average of about 22 cutting days per month, the average monthly revenue per crew is approximately $16,500, and the average annual revenue per crew is approximately $198,000.

Subtract the annual unit-level direct operating cost ($126,432) from the annual average gross revenue ($198,000) to get the annual gross operating profit per crew. The answer: $71,568, or 36 percent. Now, deduct the SG&A (which includes your costs to manage the business, get customers, pay yourself, and so on). It should never be more than 20 percent, so let’s assume 20 percent, which will leave you with 16 percent in pretax net profit. The minimum pretax net profit percentage a business must achieve to be viable is 10 percent, so in this example, the unit-level economics seem to work.

To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.” — Aliko Dangote

Factor in the Variables

Of course, there are a lot of variable costs built into this formula. The cost of gasoline, insurance, and labor costs can go up, for example. So can the cost to service and operate your equipment. The revenue you can get per lawn can fluctuate, too, as can the number of lawns your crew can cut each day. You also need to account for bad weather days or times when a worker calls in sick. 

All of these scenarios mean you need to be very diligent about monitoring your variable costs to ensure your unit-level economics remain sound. But ultimately, by getting the variables right and tracking the basic economics of your business at the very smallest level—in this case, the economics of running a business with one crew—you create the foundation from which you can build an empire.

Once you’ve perfected your operating formula, you can determine exactly how to scale to $1 million. Let me show you how to do this using the same numbers we came up with initially. Take your revenue goal ($1 million), and divide it by your annual revenue per crew ($198,000). That calculation returns an answer of 5.05, but since you can’t buy 0.5 of a truck or hire 0.5 of a crew, let’s round up to 6. So, you need 6 trucks and 12 employees to hit your revenue target.

Six trucks and 12 employees will bring in about $1,188,000 in revenue; $427,680 in gross profit; and $190,080 in pretax net profit. To hit your revenue targets, you will need 450 regular weekly customers.

Take Your Business to $1 Million

Again, these numbers are just to illustrate the fundamental concept. The bottom line is that success is tied to your unit-level economics. 

Get your formula right at the smallest level, and you will be well on your way to ensuring your small business is one of the 7 percent that reach the million-dollar milestone. Get it wrong, though—or fail to consider it at all because you assume profitability is tied to how big your business is—and chances are high that your business will fail to reach the million-dollar mark…and may even fail altogether.

For more advice on how to take your business from $0 to $1 million and beyond, you can find Empire Builder on Amazon.

Empire builder, CEO coach, in-demand speaker, and three-time #1 bestselling author Adam Coffey builds high-performance cultures that drive transformative exponential growth. A CEO for more than two decades, he led three national private equity-backed service companies for nine PE sponsors, completing 58 acquisitions and realizing billions of dollars in successful exits. Coffey is a founding partner of CEO Advisory Guru, serving as management consultant and independent director to PE portfolio companies, family offices, and elite executives. His specialties include growth strategy, mergers and acquisitions, new business development, and exits. A proud US Army veteran, Coffey lives in Texas with his family.

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Success Advice

How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements

Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.

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altering business approach
Image Credit: Midjourney

Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.

There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.

Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.

Embed the strength of AI and ML.

AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.  

Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.

ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses. 

In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.

Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities

Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased. 

Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information. 

Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place. 

In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.

Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development

You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.

You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.

Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.

Developing key skills to achieve goals

Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.

Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.

Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.

Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.

Development/Coding Knowledge

Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.

Hacking proof framework

There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.

Communication Abilities/Soft Skills

Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:

Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.

Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.

Agile Implementations

It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.

  • Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds. 
  • Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
  • Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
  • Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them. 
  • Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.

  • Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
  • Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
  • Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.

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Success Advice

Understanding the Power of Yes and No: How to Create Boundaries For Success

These words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds

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Creating legal boundaries
Image Credit: Midjourney

The two smallest yet most powerful words in life, “Yes” and “No,” have a big impact on our growth on both personal and professional levels. In addition to affecting the choices we make every day, these words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds. (more…)

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Motivation

From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone

By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality

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How to be motivated
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Are you tired of feeling like a couch potato? Do you want to transform your life and become a go-getter? You’re not alone! Many people struggle with motivation, but the good news is that change is possible. (more…)

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Success Advice

10 Micro Financial Habits for More Wealth and Peace of Mind

The World Economic Forum still reports that half of U.S. adults lack financial literacy

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micro financial habits
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You’ve heard about developing financial habits, but what about micro-financial habits? Micro habits are the tiny things you can do every day with minimal effort that, together, transform your future. (more…)

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