The entrepreneurial journey is an exceptionally peculiar one. We start our businesses with a clear vision of personal and financial freedom. Yet, that goal of freedom – the primary reason we have our own business – is never realized. We are constantly on the verge of making it, but few of us ever do. We are stuck. Simply surviving. Which begs the question “Why?” Which then begs the next question, “Who do we fix it?”
In researching the answers I have witnessed a singular pervasive problem: The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing what their biggest challenge is. Let me say that again, for the people in the back.
The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing what their biggest challenge is.
If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? The response of, “everything” is the norm. But it doesn’t work, since at any given time only one issue can be the most important. Only one thing can be top priority. And if we don’t know what it is, we may be fixing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Or, more insidious, fixing the right thing at the wrong time. We need to pinpoint the right thing to work on at the right time, and the way to do that is by mastering the Business Priority Pyramid.
To proactively correct something in your business, you need solid systems in place. Fix This Next was written for this purpose. I created a powerful diagnostic tool called The Business Priority Pyramid so you have a visual of where you are in your business, what to fix first and how to reach your business goals.
So what is The Business Priority Pyramid about, anyway? It’s a model of your business needs, based on the same fundamentals as Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Within Mazolw’s Hierarchy, you see the base is physiological, then there is safety, followed by belonging and love, esteem, and finally, self actualization. Fundamentally speaking, The Business Priority Pyramid follows this model by replacing our human needs with those of our business.
Let’s check it out:
THE BUSINESS PRIORITY PYRAMID
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- Sales (the base level)
- Always make sure your base level is met first. When it comes to humans, we need food and water. When it comes to our businesses, we first need cash flow and sales in order to move up the priority pyramid.
- Profit
- This is the creation of sustainability. Many businesses have a profit problem but are focused on sales. It’s more important to bake profit into every transaction you have. You cannot sell your way into profit. You need a system to bring profitability around.
- Order
- This is the level of organizational efficiency. The idea is as your business grows it becomes less and less dependent on you and it becomes organized. Achieving organizational efficiency will extract the owner from the business so it has no dependency on you, and can run on automatic.
- Impact
- Impact is the creation of transformation. This is where you realize your business is not about transactions but transformation. You are not selling a commodity, but a service that impacts lives and a community. What is the feeling you are leaving for the client, how are you transforming their lives and decommoditizing yourself.
- Legacy
- Legacy is the creation of permanence. It is where the business is designed to live on into perpetuity without you. When you create a legacy, you realize you are not the owner of the business, but the steward. To achieve the legacy level the owner must care more about the corporate legacy vs his personal legacy. This should be the objective of your business.
- Sales (the base level)
The Business Priority Pyramid is the compass that will move your business toward the vision you originally had. By applying it, you will assess your business to see what requires repair. You will use the evaluation tools I have created to help you navigate and understand exactly where you are in your business and what needs to be addressed in order to propel you forward.
When something is broken in our business our first instinct is to sell more, when chances are we really need a better profit or efficiency system in place. You may think you want to have an impact and have a legacy, but you don’t have the efficiency to support it. By using The Business Priority Pyramid, you’ll revert to the base level needs, and then make sure they are met before you elevate to higher levels.
It’s also important to point out that the The Business Priority Pyramid model has a get to give component. Often we are told you have to give to get, but here, the model shows the first three stages are about getting. You need to get sales into your organization, you need to get more profit and you need to get more efficiency. You need to get that organization. With that strong foundation in place you can then elevate to being transformational through impact and achieve perpetual life – a legacy for your business. Now that is about giving, because only through legacy can you contribute.
Remember, your business is fluid, living, breathing thing. You will find yourself at different levels within this hierarchy of needs at different times. That’s to be expected, especially as your business evolves. To run a profitable business you know there will be times you ping pong around this model of needs. But, the closer you stick to it, and build that solid foundation, the stronger your business will be.
If you are an entrepreneur, you likely started your business with a burning desire to make an impact and change the world. I know I did. The thing is, you can’t make an impact without the means. By using The Business Priority Pyramid in Fix This Next, you can move forward in a constructive way so you can make that impact and leave your legacy.
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Mike, this is excellent. I think that visionary-driven entrepreneurs, like myself, often get ahead of ourselves with legacy and impact before the initial foundational blocks.
This is a fantastic representation of some things I need to work on because I can’t have the impact I want if our organization is constantly struggling with efficiency and order!
Great article, Mike! Similar, but slightly different than the 5 Stages of Small Business Growth I have followed and shared with clients. I seems that middle level is hardest one for many small businesses to reach and achieve. Keep up the good work.
So glad you finally shared this publicly, Mike! As a certified Fix This Next advisor, it helps to be able to point people to this post to help explain it in YOUR own words until the book launches!
Just finished the book. I like the practical advice and the numerous case studies to reference. As a business owner I agree with the BPP and the order of its hierarchy. As the product owner in the company, I think its missing one layer right in between sales and profit – value – or the consistent reward a customer gets from purchasing your product or service. Maybe this is a personal belief but it’s the phase my software startup is in right now. We figured out how to sell multiple accounts per month. We thought this meant put more fuel in the sales fire, but clients started churning. So we went back to the drawing board and changed the pitch, made the value we pitched exactly the value they’d get when coming on board. This not only decreased churn, but increased sales. Then, we hit another wall, the core offering or value derived wasn’t stable enough to keep the clients happy. I can see where focusing on profit may help eliminate some issues (like time to value, retention, and alike) but I think it avoids the core of what is needed during this time, extreme value driven to the customer. Once that value is given consistently and the customers are happy, it seems focusing on profit would be the next step. Deliver the product faster with less resources, work on margins, etc.
Let me know your thoughts on this, it came to me because I’m living it right now. But from a product person’s perspective, the BPP is missing this piece (or at least an emphasis of value somewhere, excluding impact and legacy which I feel are longer term business goals obtained once value is a non-issue).