Upset by the lack of profits on your tax returns?

Now that most business owners are starting to receive their tax returns the collective sigh of working too hard and making too little can be heard throughout the land.

What can be done about this plague?

There are really three options.

1. Don’t do anything. Change is hard. Change involves risk. A year from now you can complain and have another beer just like this year. As unfortunate as it may sound, most people will elect option 1 and not do a thing.

2. Take the time to analyze your business and yourself and determine where improvements and changes have to be made. Start with; are you in a business that you love? What are your strongest personal skills? Can you convert your responsibilities as an owner to reflect your strengths? Work through you personal / job items then start looking at the business itself.

Review your financial records and cost accounting records to see what products and services are the most profitable. Which products contributed the most to overhead? Which products sold at a reasonable margin without great effort? Can sales of that product be expanded? Perform this type of reflective analysis on every area of your business. Production, personnel, customer service, etc. Do this with several trusted advisors to really get the creative juices flowing. Write down all your ideas and thoughts into a list. Take the list and come up with three ideas that can be implemented over the next week, three ideas that can be implemented over the next month, three the next quarter and perhaps three for the next year.

3. If you realize the futility of option 1, and you just can’t do option 2, or, after doing option 2 you realize you own the wrong business, then you need to seriously look at option 3. Sell your business. Some owners are never going to succeed with their businesses because they are in the wrong business. Because they are spread too thin trying to do too many different things at once. Or because they really do not have the drive and interest to own a business. There is nothing wrong with any of these things. There is something terribly wrong if you continue to torture yourself running an under performing businesses because you don’t want to admit the need for change. You only live once and you should enjoy what you do.

I have no idea which option makes the most sense to you. If Option 2 makes the most sense but you can’t quite get organized, get help. I have several good friends who can help you with that type of organizational analysis. Send an email and we can try to get you set up. If you know you are in the wrong place, talk to us. We can explain the sales process and how it might work for you. We will have many more articles on those topics in the coming weeks.

Greg
3/31/04