As a business owner, you're going to be faced with a lot of challenges and opportunities. We've seen this from our clients time and time again, and the difficulty is always trying to say Yes to the right things. It's a difficult choice, and you do have to weigh up how much every single opportunity is worth to your business, your staff, your customers and you yourself. You can't do everything, as nice as that would be, because you do only have a limited amount of time. So how do you decide what's worth your time?
At the end of the day, the best decisions are made with the help of advisers. You do have to have a think tank of people, trusted experts who can step up and point you in the right direction. We take that approach at Charltons, when we're working on our strategy and our growth, and we encourage our clients to do the same. Saying Yes is important, and you have to stay open to things that can push your business forward and allow for scale, expansion and transformation. But in order to be ready for that, there's a lot that has to happen.
We often sit down with our clients to talk about business moves long before they've made their final decisions. We can go through the options with them, we can consider the impact and effect it will have on all their areas of business, and we can make sure that whatever course of action they're considering, they've explored it in full. We've certainly had clients come to us after a business move has failed and ask for advice around how to solve the problems that have landed in their lap - and when this happens, we're happy to help out. But when we ask them why they didn't consider coming to us for advice in the first instance, they often say that they knew the opportunity wasn't a good idea, and they didn't want to be told so!
In the end, we're never going to tell our clients and our partners not to take on new opportunities, or take chances with their business. But we'll always be able to offer insight and information that could influence the decision in a hugely positive way, that they couldn't have brought to bear on their own. Saying Yes is tough, and it's rewarding, but you have to take it seriously. You can never go rushing into a decision without taking the time to examine it from all angles, and you can never expect it to work out if you do!
You're going to find that growing a business is about embracing change and embracing the chances to achieve more and be more. The flip side of that, is you'll be making more and more tough calls. At Charltons, we'd love to help you make those decisions with all the right knowledge in your corner!
We've recently partnered with Spotcap Australia in a competition that encourages business owners to think about times when they've said Yes, and talk to us about the impact that's had on their companies.
