Tired of success? Sick to the back teeth with all talk of stability and strong cash flow? Dreading strong growth, healthy profits, and excellent brand recognition? Then listen up! It’s time to run your business right into the dirt.
It’s easy, let’s get you started.
1) Ignore reporting
One of the best ways to ruin your business beyond repair is to ignore reporting. When you use business tools like accounting software to run reports on cash flow, COGS, budget forecasting and accounts receivable, you gain actionable insights through hard data.
Instead of steering your business on gut feel, running reports, and then taking the information onboard will help you make better business decisions. We can’t have that.
2) Neglect your website
Old websites are good websites. If you really want to curb your capacity for growth and profits, you should never update your website.
Ensure you have:
- Slow speeds.
- Terrible SEO.
- No mobile-first strategy.
- Hard-to-navigate menus.
- Woeful branding.
- No visible path to sales.
- Busy and cluttered pages.
By keeping your website stuck firmly in the early 2000s you will make great progress in diminishing your business and becoming unappealing to customers.
3) Don’t ask for customer feedback
Don’t ever listen to your customers or request feedback. What would they know?
Understanding feedback leads to a deeper understanding of your client base and increases your capacity to make your customers happy.
When you ask for feedback and then act on it to make changes to your business model, you may run the risk of making and retaining more customers and increasing your profits. Avoid at all costs, (as this will only make your business stronger and more resilient.)
4) Do it all yourself and never ask for advice
Nobody knows more than you, so never ask for advice or consult with a business advisor. Business advisors are adept professionals, skilled in analysing your data and making sage suggestions on how to improve many facets of your business.
Business advisors and accountants can help you:
- Budget and forecast.
- Rejig your business plan.
- Analyse cash flow.
- Cut down on expenses.
- Implement better workflows.
- Help with payroll and taxes.
Such professional advice and assistance will only lead to a healthier business geared toward growth.
5) Leave everything until the last minute
If you’d like to generate a tight ball of stress in your chest and make hasty decisions, you’re best off leaving everything until the very last minute. Wait until the final chance to do your:
- taxes
- BAS
- payroll
- stock orders
- customer communication
- expense payments.
If you plan and work toward getting tasks done with a calm mind and a chance to do things consciously and correctly, you’re only going to run a tighter ship.
6) Mix up your personal and business finances
Another surefire way to erode your business is to muddle up your personal and business finances. By using business funds for personal purchases and paying for business expenses with personal accounts you’ll generate a wild financial tangle.
This nest of interwoven finances will make it an absolute nightmare to tease out your real financial position and truly mess with your reporting and tax compliance. So, if you want to spend inordinate hours trying to separate your business finances down the track, go right ahead and make it nice and messy.
7) Never adjust course
If you want to run your ship into a reef, make sure you never adjust course.
There are a lot of successful business owners out there who keep a finger on the pulse, research the market, listen to feedback, and interpret data to adjust their offerings and business models.
These business owners tend to benefit from avoiding obsolescence and will make shifts to correspond to the changing tastes of their customers and prevailing market conditions.
If you want to see diminishing returns, however, don’t be like them – just remain static.
8) Create hostile relationships with your employees
Another fantastic way to damage your business is to take employees for granted. It’s often said that a business is only as good as its employees, so take advantage of that and neglect your staff. Nothing will demotivate an employee faster than neglect.
A few ways to do this include underpayments, never giving praise or encouragement, fostering a negative work culture, never offering training or education, deploying a harsh and unforgiving attitude, and having a general lack of respect. Your business will be suffering in no time!
