Julian’s Business Tips: To Finish First…
‘I prefer to run as fast as I can,’ I overheard the 10 year old say to his father, ‘Rather than j
ust jogging along like them.’ He’d just been watching the last stages of a half marathon, and was unimpressed by the pace of the runners. As one of those ‘jogging’ runners, I was a bit miffed!
What the lad had failed to grasp, was that we WERE running as fast as we could – for that distance! You can’t keep up 100 metres sprint pace over 21 kilometres!
On a long run, you need to reduce your speed, because you need to sustain it for longer. An
d also take on food and water to supplement your body’s energy reserves, so you don’t run out of puff.
As the racers say, ‘To finish first, first you need to finish!’ And your business is the same.
All businesses consume resources to create the thing that they sell; the product that brings in the profit.
The most obvious one is cash – but do you know what others are critical in your business? Raw materials? Your health?
In the same way the long distance runners need to re-fuel on route, if your business ru
ns out of its critical resources, it may collapse too.
I remember a business with tremendous sales growth that nearly failed because of lack of cash flow. Surely cash was pouring in? Yes it was, but the costs of increasing production were increasing faster, and it very nearly ‘ran out of puff’.
And as I tucked into my post-race fish and chips, I was reminded of the importance of taking time to replenish your business’s reserves after a period of sustained growth. Give yourself time to recover because business, like life, is more of a (half) marathon than a sprint!
