If you started and are running a small enterprise or anyone else trying to start it, the bottom line is, you are trying to make it work. If you are not, you probably have something that works for you or you are wasting time and probably you should be employed.

The journey of how many businesses started is as wild as a ranged Buffalo.

It started one day when my job was cut short through organization restructuring. I needed something to pay my bills on the go. Another one would say how after finishing school dint have anything to do and just decided to start cooking mandazis for selling to the neighbors.

These stories have formed foundations upon which many running their businesses remained stuck on it.

The thing is, most businesses started as a hustle, have been able to unlock and become fully established making revenue of 100M in a year.

Glorified goals of running a hustle.

However over 78% of businesses are small and micro. Not by design because only 5% manage to grow to established and sustainable businesses. The level at which founder enjoys dividend and freedom that comes with entrepreneurship.

Most of people running small businesses have nothing special to offer. How they view universe of business and how they view customers preferences and why they come to serve them. It is just addiction to their personal stories of why they started the business and remain emotional about it forever.

And just like other players in business making, throughout history, they will always get replaced. Even brands coming from all over other world joins them in territories they have mastered for years, only in the wrong way, and whole new customer preferences are pushed by those ‘’foreign’’ businesses and expand deeply from there.

The good thing is that 99% of these small businesses are just not competitor to anyone. They just get worried of each other as competitors, but there is no real competition there.

It is because they don’t follow any design.

Customers want someone who understand them. Their preferences, their conveniences, infrastructures that make them achieve buying better.

The most important thing in your small business - Design

The feeling of conquering hustle has conquered many instead.

The desire to keep up channeling many activities at the same time creates feeling that business is running and working out.

These has costed many their lifetime effort – retiring hustling with no guarded progress that can even sustain you in retirement.

Let’s break this down. The call to design your small business in readiness to start growth journey. I will try to make sense out of each as best I can, followed by practical things you can try at your level.

Your business design shapes what you can improve from one level to the other. The way you filter what matters, which goes to influence the decisions you make, which circles back to mastering few with highest return and finally brings out real spirit of entrepreneurship – starting business to grow it.

When you master the design and script you run your business – you become a curator. Adopt your rhythm.

And that’s just it !!

Plus you aren’t born with any interest. You are persuaded of their importance and they become of interest to you. This is how I have been writing about every business is scalable and it is getting great traction.

Not able to stick and build up business design is a fundamental issue.

What is in business design

Designing business can take as many elements as possible.

I would want to pick up some 6 key of them.

 i. Value proposition & Business Universe

 ii. Route to customer & Customer acquisition infrastructure

 iii. Customer journey

 iv. Business Finance

 v. Performance monitoring & Key Performance Indicators

 vi. Personal growth and mental preparedness

 Value proposition & Business Universe

Success mechanism of business comes from unwritten rule of what is that you are trying to fill in the heart of customer.

You may not get it right but you must commit into learning it as you move forward. It will become clearer and clearer.

This will take you next level of understanding the breadth of how many people are interested with that value you are pushing.

This starts to define road for business that will stagnate compared to the one that will take off.

Human being have something animals don’t have -creative imaginations. They are always looking into something that makes them feel good beyond the product.

Most successful business leaders are those that keeps provoking their creative imaginations.

 Route to customer & Customer acquisition infrastructure

Many who are in businesses have used huge chunk of energy creating & manufacturing manipulations that would create attention. Driven by deep believe that customer follows attention.

Customers are looking for deep connections. Authenticity.

Route to customer is that route that will help you connect with customer in most trusted way.

A care taker is more trusted by a single middle-class lady than yourself in a suit. You may create path through care taker.

Envisioning these – then imagine them deeply and create a web of different routes.

Creating the sales infrastructure is about being clear on what you want to tell customers when trust is assured.

Do you have clear product description may be in a note? Do you have way of how they will pay with convenience?

Building something original comes down to pattern recognition and curating it to have a path

Customer Journey

When all your engagements in business is deeply tied to survival, you miss to notice that customer takes note of every touch points they encounter in your business.

Customer journey is the encounter of your customers from initial engagement until when they say thank you for service received.

This is when you cement your relationship with customers.

Marketers stipulate that 70% customers comes from happy customers.

You have no choice in how you handle customers. Have you defined touch points that customer experiences special care – Maybe turn around time of being served, fair prices and many more

Small business have been defined by owners level of thirst for money – mostly defined by owners level of personal bills. Therefore if 20 customers are enough to pay bills, that is it. That define their whole universe.

Business Finance

For every shilling you generate from running the business – it need have clear accountability flow.

Which pocket received it, which pocket kept it, who decided how to use it, was it used for that purpose – on all these points how is it creating value to business.

Many situation arise and business money get lost in uses that are not related to business at all – this is stealing from business.

Without any clear accountability process, biased human point of view give all manner of reasons to control business money.

Fundamentals you have about money drive and dictate a lot about lifestyle you will have with money- same with your believe system about life.

It becomes lens on how you interpret importance of business money.

This will become your true north during your entrepreneurship journey.

Worthwhile to note customer loves associating with business they see is also growing

I made a presentation on unlocking business potential from understanding money framework - Get it here

 Performance monitoring & Key Performance Indicators

When you run a business that you love, your inclination to check on how it is doing moves from casual to scientific. Your effort of building that business moves from non targeted to targeted areas of improvement.

This can only become real if you have identified indicators that gives you feedback about how the business is doing. These indicators need not be relevant at start but as you build up the review system, you are able to refine these indicators.

Head counts you serve, gender distribution, how much income you get from one head.

Your energy picks up. More conviction. More clarity. People start noticing you are driven by clarity. They start relying more on your business to meet their need for service or good.

Building the interest on this means a lot. Starting it is equally very important without looking much into how you are doing it -Clarity will definitely fill in.

Personal growth and mental preparedness

The simple act of thinking about what you do and you don’t want it, every single day , slowly creates a point of view.

Then you start becoming clear. You start building desire of following your decisions and the impact they have created.

That interest circles back to create momentum of refreshed person, making better decisions and improving on the go.

This simple system forms great foundation of refreshing your mind as you build up the business.

Refreshing your mind is the thing.

The journey to creating business is long term. Anything else is fire fighting to survive onother one day.

When you get long term perspective, you create foundation to enable you keep refreshing the mind without losing yourself – it is possible to lose yourself more often.

You dont need to stick with all elements of business design so that you feel you are in control. One at a time is enough.

But you will definitely grow and shift from hustle to established business.

I hope this letter was of help.

Thank you

Gachoka

Ps

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I am Charles Gachoka - CPA-K , MBA- C.O.O & Business Development at www.cygnus.co.ke . I am also the lead in Business Finance Operations consultancy portfolio. Cygnus prides working with over 50 owners and decision makers of mid-level businesses, helping bring out huge growth through Kaizen in Operation Excellence, Business Finance Operations, ESG & Strategy Deployment model (Hoshin Kanri).

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