▲ The business hierarchy of needs

I have a very clear order of what to focus on when I start a new business.

After years of starting businesses, and many more years of helping others to start and grow their businesses, I have identified a pattern. An order of operations.

I like to call it the business hierarchy of needs. Adapted from Maslow’s original.

You can do all the right things, but the right things in the wrong order still won’t get you anywhere

What is the order?

1. Sales

   
   

   1. You must focus on creating cash. Without cash, your business doesn’t exist.

      
      

2. Profit

   
   

   1. Now you have sales, you need to create stability. Stability requires profit so you can sustain yourself long term. Now you have a proven business with sales, you can focus on turning those sales into profit.

      
      

3. Order

   
   

   1. Congratulations, you are achieving profit and have the first signs of stability. Now we must create efficiency. We need to maximise our ability to generate profit efficiently and sustainably. Changes (and competitors!) are coming.

      
      

4. Impact

   
   

   1. You are strong and stable. Things run smoothly. You find yourself with free time AND money. Time to create transformation. We can now turn our attention to creating meaningful impact. Start with our immediate circle and our own teams and build from there.

      
      

5. Legacy

   
   

   1. Reaching this point is a rare achievement. You have built a real business and you have helped many. Time to create permanence. We now consider how to ensure the longevity of the organisation and our impact over generations. Safeguarding and successful handovers become key.

Many people get caught up in the future and neglect the present. I know that until I have decent sales, I have absolutely no business trying to maximise efficiency by building things like extensive analytics or elaborate CRM systems.

Often, you need to do seemingly inefficient tasks in order to generate your first sales and kickstart the momentum you require to build a real business. As I mentioned last week, as you scale your priorities shift.

I work with clients to go through these stages in this order. I currently have clients at each of these stages.

Yes, we can work as few as 10-20 hours per week from the very beginning, but what we spend those hours doing is key.

What stage are you at?

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: hhttps://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-november-22

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