Our real world business has brought in over 1.25 million over the 3 yrs and we only started with a small $20000 loan. We have a flower shop so we have a bit of everything--services, retail, e-commerce and products. We started with a customized approach and are moving more towards products. Any advice for my situation. Good news is we have customers and we have revenues, but we are working harder and still not building any cushion. We are a small staff of 6 people.
A few options: increase your prices, lower your costs and/or increase your volume. Sounds like you've got a low-margin growing business, but as you can see, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. A staff of six on a $300,000/annual budget doesn't leave much room for profit. You might want to lower your head count. If not, then drop your lowest-margin services altogether. And raise your prices on your mid-margin services to make them high-margin. If you lose the customers, then that frees you up to focus on your high-margin services. Happy to go over any of this in more detail on a call.
One thing you might consider is sitting down with a CPA or financial advisor for an hour or two. They might have the experience to go over your books and quickly spot issues that are holding you back. If you can't find someone like that willing to help you then consider reaching out to a professor of finance/accounting at a local college for help. You may even become part of a case study for their students!
The question you need to be asking is: How do I change the business itself so that it gets more efficient?
The act of running your business has to make your funnel better - and this is what you need to figure out.
Without knowing the intricacies of your business it's hard to guess - but you need to evaluate the distribution of your customer base, because it could be that there is no clear path between the early adopters and the early majority across each of your value propositions - and this is why you're not growing. Happy to chat further
Figure out who your best customers are. The ones that order the most and complain the least. Figure out how they found you, and why they picked you over you competitors.
Then all you need to do is focus on the channels that allow you to reach more of those good customers.
Eg, you might find that your best customers come from YouTube videos you created and the worst customers are local small businesses who never pay on time. Or vice versa.
