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Got Goals? Congratulations! 7 Steps to Getting Traction in the Coming Year

February 6, 2024

By Barbara Nuss, CPA
Profit Soup

“Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important. The urgent pressures us daily, while the important waits patiently. ”

Charles Hummel, University President and Author, Tyranny of the Urgent Share on X

Congratulations! Your team just completed its first-ever strategic planning day. The creative ideas flowed freely. The team set challenging performance goals, created a plan to address two big structural issues and chose one exciting new opportunity to develop. Everybody exchanged high-fives at the end of the day.

It’s one thing to have a vision and another to create sustained change, especially when we find ourselves back in the familiar fray of life in a closely held business. It’s easy to slip into the old routines and let the tyranny of our urgent day-to-day problems crowd out our important long-term goals. Unless you change things up, before you know it the year will have passed, and your retreat goals will be a distant memory.

Here are 7 steps to build and maintain traction towards your big important goals.

Talking about KPI’s

January 9, 2024

Choose “Just the Right KPIs” and Make Reviewing them a Team Sport

Leadership teams that focus on the right KPIs perform better than those that don’t. Choosing and monitoring the right Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, keeps teams focused on the things that matter most so they can drive efficiently drive sales, customer satisfaction, operations and financial results.

Over the years we’ve coached top performing owners and conducted many financial benchmark studies examining how highly profitable companies manage to generate their high returns. One thing we learned from this: their success is not by accident!

Leaders who consistently use “just the right KPIs” to set goals and track improvement find themselves in the top 25% of their industry. Those KPIs help them find their way to higher profits. Here are some best practices to help you identify your “just the right KPIs” for your company.

Using Libraries to Enhance Entrepreneurship

December 6, 2023

By Jim Takeshita

Even under the best of circumstances, starting and maintaining a small business is a costly, complex, and time-consuming process. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur with a good idea, an experienced operator trying to meet a bottom line, or a local creative seeking community connection: Where do you go if you’re not sure what your next step is?

Try your library.

Libraries, such as the St. Louis County Library, report saving small business owners significant money each year (check out the American Library Association’s Library Value Calculator for more). This potential for cost savings is a national trend: Across the United States, libraries in every locality provide entrepreneur support resources of all kinds, from workshops and networking opportunities to specialized media equipment and market research. Working with a local library is a good way for prospective and established small business owners to get the help they need—and a good way for business support organizations to extend the reach and impact of their services.

If I Made That Much Profit, Where Is All the Cash?

November 7, 2023

By Barbara Nuss, CPA, Profit Soup

The Statement of Cash Flow Has the Answer

Any seasoned business owner or advisor has seen it happen. The business showed a handsome profit at the end of the year and mysteriously the cash balance plummeted. The first question the owners, accountants and lenders ask is, “where is all the cash?” The Statement of Cash Flow is an underutilized report that answers that vexing question.

Profit and Cash Are Not the Same Thing

Before we get to the report, let’s start with the premise that profits and cash are not the same thing. Here is an example:

In Search of a Bigger, Better Barcode

October 19, 2023

By Kaitlin Friedmann, Marketing Director, Small Business Growth, GS1 US

Entrepreneurs in the retail industry are likely aware of the increased demand from consumers to know more about the products they buy. Often, the package can’t hold all the information they seek, such as product origin stories, certificates to back up sustainability claims, and more. Throughout the product life cycle, there may also be information that needs to be communicated to the end customer, such as recalls, updates, and disposal recommendations.

The retail industry is on the verge of a major change in packaging to respond to this increased demand for more information. Brands and retailers are beginning to transition UPC barcodes, a 50-year old technology, to more data-rich, robust two-dimensional barcodes (i.e. a QR code).

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