Had a pizza lately?

If you have had your favourite pizza lately, then good for you. It's one of my favourite foods, especially on a certain Monday night.

But there's another pizza that needs to be looked at.

If you are in business, then this pizza is very crucial to your business.

It is a pie-chart (I'll use the term pizza from now on) that clearly displays where your business is coming from.

Every business must have 3 pizzas:

First pizza: clearly displaying the revenues from each different type of service your business offers.

Example: if you are running an optometrist business, then you need to list all your revenue sources by categories, such as: prescription glasses, contact lenses, contact lenses liquids and support, repairs, designer frames, spare-parts, etc.

Then use whatever tools, like spreadsheet or import the data from your accounting software and create a pizza to clearly see where is your revenue coming from, categorically.

Create another pizza. The second pizza, this time display profits after costs for each category.

You will by now see a trend taking place in your business. You'll clearly know (if you haven't by now) what are the areas to focus and emphasis on. Or how to enhance another area that is lagging behind.

Still, create another pizza: this time to display all your business costs and expenses, such as salaries, maintenance of equipment, rentals, supplies, overheads such as utilities.

Last pizza, display where your leads are coming from. This will give you an idea on how to plan for your prospecting and emphasising your strategies to create new clients from specific sources or categories.

I am now in the process of coaching a client to analyse her business this way, and it has given her a clarity like nothing before.

I am attracted to a phrase from the book, The E-Myth Revisited, that a successful business is all about the numbers involved in the business. Numbers define the business like nothing else. Everyone who is an owner of a business needs to know his numbers on the tip of fingers. And all numbers are indication to the health of the business and future prospects of the business.

Just like how our doctor is reading our blood pressure or blood glucose numbers, every business person need to be able to read the numbers in her business the same way.

So, the book, The E-Myth Revisited is a must for all business people.

A note on the book: this is not a book that you buy and read once and then place it on your book shelf to show-off to your friends that you read.

This book needs to be read over and over again. Implement a section in your business at a time, starting with the simpler ideas. Then build it up by implementing the ideas in the more complex areas of your business.

It will take no less that 10 readings over a 2-year period, but it's a worthwhile investment. After all, there's no short-cut to anywhere worth going.