Jeremy Tauri: Sweating small stuff

Don't sweat the small stuff when starting up a business.

Being in business is a life of round-the-clock challenges and juggling multiple roles.

You may be the salesperson, the financial controller, the trouble-shooter and the worker that still needs to produce results. It can be hard to prioritise everything, and you can lose track of what you're trying to achieve.

Maximising your time and ensuring resources are spent in the right areas can come from experience and mistakes, but the key is to ensure that your focus is on business growth rather than sweating the small stuff.

So how do you measure business growth? Check your financial statements. Compare them to how things are going this year versus last.

The layout of your financial statements should make it easy to see what's important - at the top of your profit and loss is revenue. Revenue is of utmost importance; it dictates how you will make your spending decisions. It is also the contributor to either a profit or a negative financial result.

Is your revenue higher, is it lower? What can you change to influence this number? If you're in retail, check your margins; the difference between revenue and the cost of your products. Are they higher or lower than prior years.

This is the stuff to sweat; changes in revenue and margins should be your focus, especially when tracking growth.

So what is the small stuff that I see people sweat? Trying to save $50 a year on a cost, like insurance, or eftpos hire. This is small stuff.

Review cost savings from time to time, but not at the expense of trying to grow revenue in the thousands. I've seen costs become the first focus for businesses running on hard times when the real issue is decreasing revenues and lack of strategy. Spending time on things that may be immaterial or have little influence of your profit and revenue lines are things to refine later.