Talking Cents

Small business accountant in Sydney: driving business growth the right way

“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”

I recently came across this quote from the founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake. It prompted me to take this and adopt it to many of our small business clients.

Many small businesses are seeking to diversify their businesses by creating different revenue streams or expanding their service offerings. But the issues here are the reasons for doing so and will the changes really benefit the business in the long run. Just increasing your revenue does not necessarily grow a business.

Adding products or services that complement existing ones is a common sense approach to expand a small business. One example would be a gym selling health foods and supplements. It’s a product that you know your customers are going to buy so why not be the one to sell it to them. However, offering completely different products or services may just confuse your customers. Just imagine if mas accountants started selling website builds to its customers, this would only serve to confuse our existing customers, not a great branding exercise.

So the key points to take from working at the right thing are: -

• Keep refining your core product until it is the best in the marketplace., i.e. never stop refining!
• If you do have multiple products or brands ALWAYS track each one’s profitability independently.
• Don’t confuse your existing customers with new random product offerings under the same brand. 
• Carefully analyse the effect of new products on existing ones, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. 
• Revenue for revenues sake is not the way to go, each offering to the market must be able to stand on its own, be profitable and not impact on other products profitability.

For more useful tips and advice on how to grow your small business, contact us here at mas accountants, the original accountants for small business, servicing Sydney and Melbourne for over fifty years.