There are five main areas to focus on in an approximate order of importance:
- Operations
- Finance
- People
- Marketing
- Tech
Operations
- Core business process
- Do you do what you do well?
- Do you do it well consistently?
- Do you do it well consistently and profitably?
- The org chart
- Do you have roles?
- Are those roles defined?
- Is there a clear decision-making framework and/or hierarchy?
- Planning
- Do you have a prioritized list of what you want to do next?
- Do you talk to your customers on a regular basis?
- Can and do your customers recruit other customers?
Finance
- Accounting
- Do you know how much money you do or don’t make?
- Do you manage your costs by category?
- Do you manage your cash conversion cycle?
- Tax
- Are you accurately accruing for and paying them?
- Are you working to reduce them?
- Do you know what potential benefits are available to you?
- Finance
- Do you have a forward-looking forecast grounded in realistic assumptions?
- Do you have a process for how to decide to make or not make an investment?
- Is your capital structure optimal?
People
- Compensation
- Do you pay a fair wage that is commensurate with an employee’s workload?
- Do you offer competitive benefits?
- Do you have a thoughtful incentive plan?
- Recruiting and retention
- Do you have a hiring process that attracts multiple candidates for each job opening?
- Do you know who is doing a good job and do they know if they are doing a good job?
- Do the people who do a good job tend to stick around and get increases in responsibility?
- Culture
- Do your people come to work?
- Do your people like to come to work?
- Do your people actively recruit their most talented friends to come to work with them?
Marketing
- Operations
- Do you have a website and working phone number?
- Do you rank on Google?
- Do you actively target potential customers?
- Assets
- Do you have a logo, brand, and high-resolution examples of your work?
- Do you have access to professional copywriters and designers?
- Are you actively running and measuring marketing tests?
- Strategy
- Do you know how well your marketing is working?
- Can you measure the ROI of your marketing spend?
- Can you confidently spend more on marketing?
Technology
- Systems
- Does technology facilitate your work?
- Is your technology up-to-date?
- Are you regularly updating your technology?
- Processes
- Can you outline a standard business process?
- Do you consistently streamline and improve that standard business process?
- Are you actively adopting new technology to aid your business process?
- Strategy
- Do you have a process for identifying gaps in your tech stack?
- Are you able to smoothly integrate new technology?
- Can you confidently spend more on technology?
Originally found at Permanent Equity.