All about the bottom line

I like to follow blogs and tweets of other businesspeople as it’s always good to read the thoughts of other people who are like-minded and committed to trying to achieve their dreams.  There’s a plethora of business advice available at all levels and most businesspeople will know all sorts about what they are supposed to do.  Actually committing to doing that though is another story.  It’s difficult not to spend all your time fire-fighting, especially when you are running a small business which depends greatly on your involvement and all decisions are down to you.

One of the best bits of advice I’ve read recently was written by Guido J. van den Elshout of happyhotelier.com:

“Whatever you do and hope to achieve, do not forget the bottom-line, ever!

Start your day asking yourself “What can I do today to better the bottom-line” and end every day with asking yourself: “What did I do today to better the bottom-line and what shall I do tomorrow to better the bottom-line”

This is so key to the success of business, and it is such a simple premise, but how many owners of SME’s can honestly say they do that?  Committing time every day to think about business development, and how your actions for the day will affect your business overall, is so important.  It is something that I am only just starting to do, over a year and a half into running my business, and now I can see how important it is.  It takes real commitment to do this, as it requires you to look away from the small stuff which seems vitally important at the time, but in the grand scheme of things just isn’t, and look at the big picture and deal with the stuff that really is important!