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Business is Business — Keep Track

BRAND ACTIVATION

When it comes to measuring the scale of your business, small is not actually small. I repeat SMALL IS NOT SMALL. Here are 3 costly assumptions you might be making as a ‘small’ business:

  • We are too busy building, documentation and record-keeping can come when we become big.
  • All businesses function alike especially if they are in the same industry
  • Our initial strategy is perfect, we just need to stay loyal to it

Everything stems from your belief that “we are just 1 or 2 on our team”. This makes you quickly lose the consciousness of the fact that ‘business is business’ if you are in for the long term. Here is a 3-part series on the thought-patterns of potentially big businesses but we will focus on the first today and walk through others, subsequently.

Most small businesses do not take documentation seriously right from the start, and it is not just enough to have it all in your head. When our brand was about to launch in 2018, we almost committed this same blunder, mixing up records, and not making it clear enough. I mean we were so excited about carrying out market research and developing our product that keeping track of something as small as transportation cost, or writing reports (keeping records is not limited to cash flow alone) almost seemed insignificant. Phew! It was a roller coaster of activities, but the key importance of doing this is that you will be able to track spending, revenue, and profit as well as to measure the progress your product is making in the market.

As it is important in everyday life to do reviews, evaluations, and backtrack in order to be able to map out the best way to move forward, make improvements, correct mistakes and keep tabs on excesses, the same goes for a business, irrespective of the scale.

A small business is like that baby that you just have to nurture until it matures. You will pay close attention to the kind of food he eats, possible allergies, etc, and make necessary changes or keep a habit, depending on the baby’s response. And if you are not observant and diligent at keeping track enough, something really bad could happen to the baby.

Other forms of documentation that are imperative include; Vision, Goals, Objectives, Projections, Achieved results, Timelines, Customer feedback, etc.

You keep records to be able to know early on, what works for your own particular business and what doesn’t.

What kind of documentation do you consider important? Kindly comment below.