Act as the business you want to be

If you want the genesis of this concept, watch Steve Job’s Commencement Address To Stanford University Graduates in 2005 shown below.

Listen to one of our Platinum Program Members
who explains this philosophy in his own words:

When we started, we were aiming to assist smaller businesses, those with less
than 20 employees.  This is because 55% of all employment income in this
country is paid by those businesses.  The multinationals only provide 2%.

So wanting to help Australia be a more prosperous and competitive economy
meant helping those smaller businesses to really become successful,
particularly in export markets.

So we started as a small, lower cost base business able to serve smaller
clients cost effectively.  Since then I have grown less enamoured with this
position over time.  There is a reason companies remain small.  Sometimes it
is because that is what they want.  Less.  Less is easier and can involve
reduced risk, though not always.  But often it is because they don’t have
the mindset, skill or vision to be anything else.

It is clear that for us to grow, I have to have the resources to do more work
and the income to pay for those resources.  So our business model doesn’t
scale if we want to move up in size.  Particularly with the type of clients we
have generally been working with.

This year I’m thinking about how to take what we are doing and push it past
the $1,000,000 mark.  So what I’ve started doing is pricing our quotes as if
we already were that size.  Sometimes this means the price is double what it
might have previously been.  But I’m also looking at the delivery side and
making sure it also looks like it should for the size of business I want to
be.

And it is working!  We are changing.  We are looking at moving to commercial
premises before the end of the financial year.  A new class of clients are
being attracted to us (and us to them) because our value proposition makes
sense to them.  Some of these clients are larger than our previous target
companies.  Some are wanting to grow and know they need the right
partnerships to get there.  There is a long way to go yet but the progress
is encouraging.

So my distinction is a simple one.  Start acting like who and what you want
to be.  Don’t wait for the growth and then respond.  Change first.  Be the
catalyst yourself.  Make it happen first in you and then it will flow out to
the rest of the world.

Steve Jobs would be proud.